


we don’t need ghost stories

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Crack Treated Seriously, Future Fic, Guilt, Honeymoon, Image Is Everything, Kylo Ren and Poe Dameron Double Down On All Their Bad Decisions, Lovers to Enemies to Uneasy Allies to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mostly Canon Compliant, Pining, Redeemed Ben Solo, Redemption is a Long Slow Road, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, The Aftermath of War and Everything That Comes After, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:15:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “If this is about making a galactic statement about stability, then by all means, let her make a galactic statement about stability. Tell her if a marriage is what she wants, Poe Dameron’s hand is the only one I’ll even consider accepting.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artemis1000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to [pineovercoat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineovercoat/pseuds/pineovercoat) and [perlaret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perlaret/pseuds/perlaret), who cheer-led the hell out of this fic from start to finish. It wouldn’t exist without you two and I am grateful for that.
> 
> To Artemis: damn you for having great prompts.
> 
> Title is from “Live in the Moment,” by Portugal. The Man.

“She wants me,” Kylo said, voice taut and on the verge of snapping, “to get married.” He stopped himself, letting the words sink in for an uncomfortable stretch of seconds. “What exactly does she think this is?”

He set aside his work, if scrolling through headline after headline decrying his involvement in the Republic’s reclamation efforts could be called work—at this point, it felt more like masochism—and looked up at the source of his disruption. It was better, he supposed, than reading a story headlined with WITH LATEST FIRST ORDER REVELATIONS, MORE BOMBSHELLS AS TESTIMONY PROVES SOLO-ORGANA INVOLVEMENT IN WAR CRIMES. Maybe this time, the author will have revealed that Kylo freely gave that testimony and offered those exact revelations, rather than suggest again that he was hiding his culpability even amongst the highest judicial powers in the land, even when the transcripts proved the opposite.

And maybe Mitaka will suddenly inform Kylo that he’d developed a sense of humor somewhere along the way and had chosen the worst possible moment to share it with Kylo. Here and now. With his suggestion that Kylo get married.

Mitaka, who hadn’t grown a spine in the years since Kylo had first met him, yet still managed to hold himself upright whenever he delivered bad news, bit his lip and narrowed his focus to a spot just above Kylo’s left shoulder. It was a favored spot and seemed to help him. His tone only shook a little bit as he spoke anyway. Otherwise, he might well have gibbered his way through his recitation. “A goodwill gesture in the name of stabilizing galactic relations in the wake of the conflict, Supreme Leader.” He said it so earnestly that Kylo only imagined silencing him where he stood in six or so different ways. A record low.

“The peace treaty, disarmament agreement, and unconditional surrender weren’t enough to do that?” At times like this, he wished he still wore his helmet. His natural voice never quite captured the ominous timbre the vocoder managed to create. Narrowing his eyes, he stared down at his desk. The leather of his gloves protested the tight fists he made of his hands. It felt good to express his tension in this way, the only option left to him in light of his circumstances here. “She merely wishes to humiliate me further.”

“I cannot say—”

“That is excellent to hear, because I did not ask. You can tell her it’ll be a cold day in every last hell this galaxy has ever concocted before I’ll agree to her terms.” Then, he smiled, grim, cool, pretending disaffection because he would rather this man didn’t realize what he was truly feeling: pain, betrayal, fear. And it must’ve been a terrible smile because Mitaka looked away entirely and muttered something that might have been, _dear gods, what did I do to deserve this_. “Better still, tell her I won’t agree unless she gives up the Resistance’s own golden boy to the cause. If this is about making a galactic statement about stability, then by all means, let her make a galactic statement about stability. Tell her if a marriage is what she wants, Poe Dameron’s hand is the only one I’ll even consider accepting.”

The beauty of it, he thought, lay in the fact that she wouldn’t dare do that to Poe. And even if she did, he would never agree, not now that the war was won and he’d come out victorious, the galaxy a safer place for his contributions and sacrifices. He need not give more for the cause and he had to know it. He was free of his burdens.

How nice it must have been to be Poe Dameron in the aftermath of Reconciliation.

They’d sometimes crossed one another’s paths during the settlement talks, though not often, and Poe’d proved himself cocky and certain enough then, so much so that he’d felt comfortable spitting vitriol at Kylo Ren himself, like he’d never even considered that Kylo might throw them all right back into a maelstrom in a fit of slighted pique. The Resistance cause was no longer Poe’s only priority or else he never would have risked such childish behavior then; the same had no reason to be untrue now.

Besides, there was too much history between them, too much bad to counteract the good that might once have been. Perhaps it was cruel to throw this in Poe’s face, but no one could ever say Kylo Ren wasn’t selfish. He would not make himself into more of a spectacle than these court proceedings already did. So long as this entire scheme was forgotten, it didn’t matter how cruel he was.

He’d already done far worse anyway; he knew how to endure. So did Poe. And so he trusted Poe would survive being a momentary pawn in a game played between his mother and himself.

Not that it mattered. Poe would never agree and General Organa would never force the issue and they would get on with the usual parade of nonsense, at the end of which Kylo would likely be hauled away in lighter chains than he deserved. Because he knew how politics worked and how much sway his mother had with the sort of people who held his life in their palms.

Not that she’d ever deigned to use that sway to help him push his own projects through the Senate, his own… mistakes that needed rectification. Marriage was only a distraction from that, a thing that would do him no good in this small pursuit of justice that only he seemed to care about.

“What progress has been made in seeing aid sent to Drethida? Has the Senate even read my proposal yet?” Kylo winced. Bad choice of words.

Mitaka shook his head, relieved, perhaps, to be back onto solid ground. This was a question that Kylo asked of him often and the answer was easy. “No, sir.”

Kylo sighed and did not lash out at Mitaka for telling him what he did not want to hear. He’d had a great deal of practice in that regard. “What about Senator Verlaine’s office?”

“They’re still substantiating your claims.”

 _They’re stalling_ , he thought, uncharitable, but it wasn’t unexpected. They’d stalled him at every turn, picking and prodding at every request he made until he’d shaved it down to this one system, this one mistake, this one thing he was willing to keep running into walls over. Drethida was nothing to ninety-nine percent of the galaxy, a backwater, a nowhere planet that just so happened to be deemed useful to Supreme Leader Snoke once upon a time, a dangerous proposition, but not an uncommon one.

And yet…

Later, he hoped he would convince the most amenable senators to do more than hem and haw at him, distrustful of his motives and the possibility of being tarred by the same brush that still painted him in varying shades of monster. For now, he had to pick and choose, pushed at every turn into a newer, smaller corner. And this was the place, selfish though it may have been, personal though it was, he’d laid claim to.

For all the good it was doing him now.

“Go.” He dismissed Mitaka with a careless flick of his wrist. Mitaka, who loved to be dismissed, nodded and scurried for the door. “And Mitaka? This is not the First Order. I am not the Supreme Leader and you will stop referring to me as such.”

Mitaka stilled as quickly and quietly as a deer caught in floodlights. “Yes, sir.”

Comfortable in his sense of righteous certitude, he leaned back in his chair, a little pleased with the elegance of his response given the circumstances. Marriage. Like that would solve any of Kylo’s problems. With Kylo’s response, his mother would see reason. There wasn’t a marriage in the galaxy that could shore up the Republic’s stability. No two people were that important and nobody saw anything other than a fallen tyrant when they looked at him. A partner wouldn’t change that.

Having solved the problem entirely, it was better to put the thought of marriage to Poe Dameron from his mind completely. There was still work to be done, after all, and Kylo would see it completed before the end.

It was the only thing left that he knew how to do.

No longer interested in seeing how his own image played in the media, he got back to the real work. The work that sometimes made it preferable to see himself as the evil the Holonet still purported him to be, like it was that simple—and sometimes Kylo wished it was. The important work. The work that stymied him at every turn.

Drethida. It deserved better than the indifference shown to it by the Republic at large and the Senate in particular. That Kylo was the only one to see it was such a laughable absurdity that he couldn’t help but feel for the people who found themselves unlucky enough to be from there. This was, even from the start, the one thing he’d thought would be an easy sell.

But with a champion like him, he’d come to believe, as days stretched into weeks stretched into months, who needed enemies?

* 

The office space afforded to him by the Resistance’s—excuse him, there were so many changes in the aftermath of victory, so many political lines redrawn, shifting like so much sand in the wind—New Republic’s retinue on New Alderaan were sparse, if fairly appointed, large enough for his purposes and humane to a fault. He was allowed a small staff and privacy within reason—he sensed multiple bugs and cam droids, of course, but nothing truly lavish, nothing he had any qualms about since he had nothing left to hide—and time enough to furnish the Res— _New Republic_ with the intelligence they so keenly desired. Chains of command, old supply lines, spy networks, bureaucratic protocol, the works. Were Hux here, he would have squealed much more effectively, but Kylo did what he could and he did nothing by half measures.

Whatever he knew was theirs.

It was nice, insofar as Kylo still knew the meaning of the word. Better still, it was quiet. Calm. Tranquil even.

Nobody bothered him either, another mercy. Certainly nobody barged in unannounced, a swagger in their step and poorly concealed fury in their eyes.

“I’m a better man than you give me credit for, Ben.” Poe Dameron stood before him, hands planting themselves on Kylo’s desk as he leaned in close. Kylo still didn’t understand why Poe insisted on calling him that which he no longer was. There was no going back to being Ben Solo; even Poe couldn’t be so stupid as to believe otherwise. “I know what duty and sacrifice are and I’ve never much minded either.”

A wicked gleam sparked in his eyes, vicious and a little mean. _Got you, you bastard_ , that gleam said. _Idiot’s Array. You lose_.

Kylo blinked. And blinked again. And every thought flew from his mind, every rejoinder, every possible response.

When he didn’t reply quickly enough, Poe did it for him.

“The Republic owes your mother more than any of us can ever repay. If I can do anything to balance the ledger, I’m gonna. And if that means making you look palatable, I will.” The fire of his conviction threatened to consume him—and Kylo, too. “You wanted my hand, pal? You got it.”

Poe spit those final words across his desk, a warning shot across the bow, a dare, a threat, the intimation clear that Kylo may have wanted his hand, but he wouldn’t like it now that he’d gotten it. Be careful what you wish for, he practically shouted.

Kylo was not intimidated. He wasn’t. Just flabbergasted. There was nothing Poe could do to him within the confines of a sham marriage that could hurt him more than he’d already been hurt.

But he still knew how to piss Kylo off royally. That was easy.

Smoothing his tunic across his torso, he gathered all his wayward thoughts close. A tight knot of dread grew in the pit of his stomach. Acid washed the back of his throat. His own fury spread through him quick and destructive and cleansing as wildfire. He didn’t ever intend to hide behind his mother’s legend or her largesse. Poe spoke of debts. Kylo intended to pay them. “Those debts aren’t yours to pay. Whatever she has in mind… this won’t help.”

Poe’s eyebrow twitched upward and resettled. “She doesn’t have anything in mind now. But it won’t hurt anything either, so I’m willing to go ahead with it.”

 _You don’t know it won’t hurt,_ Kylo thought, desperately clawing for any antidote to this madness he could find. To say he was shocked would be an understatement. To find himself confronted with Poe now, already, was a disadvantage that Kylo hadn’t expected either. It was so much easier to pretend that he was still only the cruel, twisted man he’d become when it was cowering, terrified Mitaka across from him. “You’ll look like a fool. You’ll be—”

Poe laughed, long and bitter. “I have some experience there.” He pushed himself away from the desk, took a handful of steps backward, arched his arms wide. A challenge. A concession. It made Kylo reckless, this daring, made him strain to push this as far as it would go. And Poe, it seemed, felt the same way. “They don’t need starfighter pilots in peacetime and I’m no diplomat. But I can do this. It doesn’t even interfere with my plans.”

Kylo snorted. In his experience, soldiers were always needed. Poe’s vanity just wouldn’t let him believe it was worth it unless the galaxy at large was in peril. Still, Kylo was curious despite himself and if he was snide in his interrogation, well. Poe wasn’t exactly keeping things cordial himself. “What are your plans?”

“To get married apparently.” Only the tightening of the skin around his eyes suggested anything was amiss; the rest of him was as neutral as a porcelain mask. _You haven’t earned the right to know_ , that neutrality said.

“Your reputation will…” He could only imagine what the Holonet news cycle would make of it. Vicious didn’t even begin to cover it.

“You need to take a few more steps out of this room if you think they don’t already know as much as they need to on that score,” Poe answered, dry. More sweetly, sickeningly so, poisonously so, “In a way, you and me are the only ones that make sense. If you’d gone the other way, General Organa might have scrapped the idea altogether. Funny how things works out.” He took a few more steps back, hit the door with his shoulder blades. “Oh, and be ready by 16:00. We’ve got a date.”

With that, he slapped his hand on the access panel next to the door and disappeared into the hall, whistling a sharp, jaunty tune. It was, Kylo thought, the thready, melodic notes of a song he remembered hearing a few times on Yavin 4, back when he was younger. Back when they were both younger and liked each other better.

Damn him.

Damn all of them. Damn, perhaps, himself and his mother most of all, for the stubbornness he inherited from her. For his inability to back down when cornered.

He tried to call Poe back, to say, _no, this is a mistake, a bluff. I never meant it_.

He just couldn’t get the words out.

* 

A cam droid hovered, silent and distant, in a grove of nearby trees and Kylo almost called the whole thing off again on account of it. Poe’d only agreed to this travesty this morning and already it was entirely outside of Kylo’s control. Cam droids. Dates. This wasn’t…

But before he could do more than think about capitulating, Poe twisted to look at Kylo from his place on the grass. He shook his head in short, neat jerks of his chin that made a mass of curls rake across his eyes, leaving them shadowed and unfathomable. His hair had gotten a little longer somewhere between the end of the war and now. Kylo hadn’t noticed it before. And why should he have?

His fists clenched at his side. He wished he hadn’t noticed it now.

Poe’s message came through loud and clear anyway. Play ball for that hovering little cam droid. Play nice.

And then Poe smiled and the years fell away. The illusion was so complete that Kylo could almost believe they’d gone back in time. He beckoned Kylo forward and patted the stretch of green-grey ground next to him, inviting. “Suralinda’s,” he explained, rolling his shoulder toward the cam droid. “No audio. She just wants to get a few shots of us together before sunset. Romantic like.”

The illusion shattered and Kylo was left swallowing the lump that formed in his throat. In the silence that fell following Poe’s explanation, Kylo heard the whirr and snap and low buzz of the cam droid completing its task. The sound mingled with that of the chittering of insects, the distant caw of birds. Every other creature on the planet seemed to be winding down for the day and here Kylo was, finding himself keyed up, invigorated by loathing—of himself, this situation, and Poe for managing to hold it together under the circumstances and better than Kylo himself, who could have been more gently tossed about upon a raging ocean than he was being thrown about now by his own thoughts.

In the end, it was Poe who’d made a fool of him and not the general as he’d expected. And now they were both paying for it. The cost wasn’t so very high for him, was it, compared to what he owed, but why truly did Poe let himself get caught up in these expenses?

Kylo took the seat offered and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles as he leaned back on his hands. A breeze kicked up in pleasant counterpoint to the warm, setting sun. It was nice, but he could not enjoy it. How easy, though, it would have been to slip into the false intimacy Poe had thrown together on such short notice. “It reminds me of—” he said, before he remembered that their time on Yavin 4 wasn’t something he’d earned the right to bring up.

After all, the Temple’s destruction marked not just the loss of Ben Solo to the Dark; there were always unexpected casualties in war, innocent bystanders lost in the conflict. If he’d thought about it, he would have known to mourn his relationship with Poe at the time. But he did not. He didn’t even think of Poe in that moment. Poe was nothing to him, from the moment he drew his lightsaber on his uncle until the moment he threw it down, fully expecting Rey to take his head for his crimes. As angry as he might have been at the situation he’d forced and been forced into here, there were a few lines he was no longer willing to cross and rubbing their past in Poe’s face so directly was one of them.

What was one relationship worth when weighed against all the power in the galaxy? He hadn’t asked that question, but he’d had it answered with a ruthlessness that hadn’t actually startled him, not at the time. It was only in retrospect that he noted anything unusual in how he’d responded to the loss. He’d reconciled himself to the injury to his family in all this; he’d done things to them that couldn’t be forgiven. But at least he could trace the logic back to its source, could unearth a shred of a reason for it if need be. Snoke’s influence had been insidious, but he hadn’t slithered into the dark spaces of Kylo’s mind and invented his problems wholesale.

There’d never been a reason to lash out at Poe though. Not even on the _Finalizer_.

Poe laced his fingers together behind his head, used them as a pillow as he laid back, eyes closed. With one leg bent, he looked the very picture of ease. And Kylo had to give it to him, his smile never wavered, not until the cam droid beeped and flitted away, at which point it crumbled and reshaped itself into an uncertain frown.

“You’ll be on house arrest for the duration of our arrangement when I’m not there to accompany you elsewhere,” he said finally, ignoring Kylo’s earlier misstep. It wasn’t meant to be a courtesy, Kylo guessed, though it was one anyway; Poe had never been particularly courteous, not even before. Kylo could only assume it was a protective measure. “Undisclosed location. You’ll give up everyone and everything. You’ll renounce it all. Publicly. If there’s even a sliver of a First Order cell left that you don’t rat out…”

“I do this already,” Kylo replied, stern, quietly furious. He wasn’t a child. Of course, he hadn’t heard anything about house arrest. Nobody had told him where he’d end up, but he kept that bit to himself. His fate didn’t matter in all this and so he didn’t ask about it, even though he was surprised with the leniency.

“I suppose you do. Then you’ll forgive me if I make an additional request, off the record.” His features tensed and he opened his eyes. “You earn the mercy you’ve been shown.”

“I’m doing what I can.” He fought down the urge to say more, to defend himself. If Poe couldn’t recognize what he was doing already, it wouldn’t help Kylo’s case any to point it out to him.

Poe’s gaze sharpened. His voice lowered, laced with threats, with promises; it slowed to a crawl so the words could sink in. “Do more.”

Kylo swallowed and nodded. What else could he do? All he had was his determination to counteract the effects of the mess he’d made. It wouldn’t ever be enough, but it was all he had left. This and a marriage he didn’t want to a man he…

To a man who hated him.

No amount of pretending would change that.

“Are we done?”

“Yeah,” Poe answered, exhaustion weighing his words down. “We’re done.”

Kylo pushed himself to his feet; he didn’t look back as he strode away. Insofar as he could be proud of anything, he was proud of that.

Do more, do better.

He’d certainly try.

* 

A message on his personal, private comm told him to meet Poe here at 13:00. ‘Here’ turned out to be the quartermaster’s office, a part of the base he’d never been to, with Rey, who had. The message had been short on other details—or any, as the case was—and if Rey knew anything, she was staying quiet for the time being.

She was the only escort any of the rest of General Organa’s forces trusted with Kylo and this wasn’t the first time she’d been pressed into this particular duty. And for understandable reasons: ultimately, she’d been the one to stop him. She was, really, the only one who could. And in a way, that made her the only one he could trust entirely to keep him in line.

He sensed, as always, her continuing disdain for and disappointment in him. It was one of the few certainties in his life these days and, strangely enough, it grounded him. 

He would, he thought, never regain her trust. No matter what he did, she would only ever see the man who’d turned his back on her when she’d shared so much of herself with him, who saw the truth for what it was and denied it still. He committed folly in her eyes and her comrades had died for it. The stain of that weakness might one day fade, but it would never disappear entirely.

There was no forgiveness from her, only acceptance of the place he had carved for himself out of her home. That she awarded him even that much was staggering and humbling.

“Poe intends to see this ridiculous scheme through,” she said, waspish, as they stood outside the closed door. She glared at it, as though it was the thing that wronged her instead of him.

“Poe never met a ridiculous scheme he wasn’t willing to champion. Do you know why my mother thinks this will work?” He hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask Poe, who might also know the answer. But Rey felt safe enough to ask. Rey, he couldn’t hurt with this.

Her lips pursed and thinned. She treated his question as a serious one. “General Organa’s cachet extends only so far and she wants—” With a disgusted sigh, she crossed her arms to ward off a chill. “You are more shielded than you know, Kylo Ren. That’s all I can say.”

A smile born of morbid pleasure twitched at the corner of his mouth. She now was the only one who recognized what he was and did not shy away from giving name to it even when everyone else continued to ignore the reality of it. He wished they shared Rey’s clear sight, Poe and his mother and everyone else who still thought of him as Ben. It would be better for everyone if they did.

“You owe Admiral Dameron your life.” Her gaze caught his. “Don’t you dare forget it.”

“Is that all?” he asked. He probably owed Poe a great deal more than that.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, venom dripping from her tone. “I’ve said nothing.” Her chin jerked toward the door. “You’re keeping him waiting. I’ll be out here the whole time.” Her eyes flashed, daring him to deny her. “Don’t try anything.”

Stepping inside, the first thing he heard was the sound of muttered complaints coming from behind a makeshift screen above which Kylo saw the top of Poe’s head. “Come on, I haven’t had to wear my Republic dress uniform in… I actually can’t remember how long now, that’s how long it’s been. Of course it’s gonna be a little bit—” Poe said and then sighed. “There hasn’t been much time for—” He stopped talking while something that sounded like a bleat issued from what was quite probably a droid. “Ceevee, just take it in, okay? That’s your job, isn’t it?” It spluttered out something else, something very uncomplimentary and insubordinate, and Poe finished, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll eat more and hit the gym. All this spare time I’ve got floating around has to be good for something, right?”

As far as Kylo knew, spare time was in short supply. _Most droids don’t parse sarcasm_ , he thought pointlessly.

Poe seemed to grow a couple of inches, his eyes able to meet Kylo’s over the screen. “Oh, good,” he said, sounding way more relieved than Kylo ever would have expected, “you’re here.” Stepping out from behind the screen, he smiled, a bit wary. Kylo might have questioned that smile, but he was a little preoccupied with the play of muscles visible beneath the sleeveless black shirt he wore. It had been a long time since he’d seen that much of Poe’s body on display and he certainly hadn’t had years of military training under his belt at the time. It was impossible to ignore how wan Poe looked, how sallow and unhappy, but before Kylo could protest or further catalog the changes in his physique, Poe pulled his uniform top over his head and tucked it into his trousers. “Time for your fitting. Don’t mind Ceevee. He’s just very opinionated.”

“I—”

Poe’s hand flapped at his torso and his eyes raked down Kylo’s body, found it wanting in ways Kylo didn’t care to think about. “Out with it. You’re not wearing robes to our wedding. Not those ones anyway.”

“What, strip?”

“I’ll turn away if you’re worried about your modesty,” Poe said, rolling his eyes, and did just that, slow and purposeful. Calling over his shoulder, he added, “Some of us were thinking something… inspired by your heritage.”

There was a sour note in Poe’s voice, like he thought it tasteless, too, and couldn’t actually say what he meant. Alderaan. Not his heritage, but his mother’s, a thread that traced back to Imperial treachery and little else for most people despite its long, cultured history. Kylo wondered who’d come up with the idea and discarded his musing as unnecessary. What was the point now? He wouldn’t agree to it anyway. Even if his mother herself suggested it, he’d put his foot down. Not that he thought it was her, of course. It didn’t track with how she thought.

Kylo stilled as he shrugged out of his clothing and unsuccessfully willed, his stomach to quit roiling. “That’s obscene,” he replied. _Cruel_ , his mind whispered. _Callous_. If there was one thing he’d never wanted, it was the use of Starkiller Base. On that score, his conscience was clean. It was the one mercy he’d ever been able to show himself, the one thing on which Snoke had been unable to influence him. “I can’t wear… no. I refuse. Who suggested it?”

“Suit yourself, then,” Poe answered, relieved. “Ceevee can get your measurements. Let him know what you want to do. It’ll get done.” The sound of his throat clearing filled the room. “For what it’s worth, you look good in black.” He conveniently ignored the more important question and Kylo didn’t have the heart to push for the answer more thoroughly. If he was getting married by committee, so be it.

Kylo stepped behind the curtain and found himself confronted with a squat, column-shaped droid, head rounded a bit like an astromech, perched on a pole that lifted and fell according to what height he wanted to be. “Is that a good idea?” Down to his trousers and a tank, he eyed the droid with frank suspiciousness and narrowed his eyes at it. Its appendages looked like they could very easily do his anatomy some harm. Quiet, his whisper harsh, he added, “Make this quick, okay?”

“What about gray?” Poe suggested, perhaps still hopeful for a quick and painless fitting.

“I… really don’t care,” Kylo admitted.

“You never thought about what you’d wear if you ever got married?”

“No?” Kylo breathed in deeply and let it out again. “I was going to be a Jedi, remember?” The CV unit scanned him between inhalation and exhalation. Kylo waited until the droid was done to continue speaking. They’d never talked about this. Ever. For good reason. Back then, he hadn’t known what would happen to them even if… even if the worst hadn’t happened to take the decision away from them. There were others of Luke’s acolytes who took lovers—Luke never disallowed it—but Kylo had never seen the point, not when Poe was half a galaxy away at the Naval Academy on Hosnian Prime and comm signals were intermittent at best and Poe was the only one he wanted; he wouldn’t, he’d decided on the day they parted, allow himself to be lonely for something he couldn’t have, demand anything more of Poe than they’d already shared, and took nothing from anyone else in the meantime. There’d been so much to do, training and research and study anyway. It kept him busy. He was content, if not happy. “Did you?”

A long silence stretched and stretched again, stretched like the candies you could get on the boardwalks of Chandrila’s beaches, stretched until it snapped. “Yeah, you know? I did sometimes.”

Kylo peeked around the screen, much to the disgruntlement of the droid, his fingers gripping the cool, metallic edge of it as he braced his weight against the bars that held it upright. Now Poe was only half turned away, his features shadowed, hidden by the ridiculous curl of his hair, but there was no hiding the fact that Kylo had poked his head out like this, that he’d needed to see Poe at this very moment. He might have tried to disguise it anyway, but Poe’s gaze lifted and caught his and there was no way to stop himself from seeing the contempt with which Poe held himself, the reproach, the touch of apathetic humor that glossed it over, made it almost fit for consumption. It was okay to be Poe Dameron and to be self-deprecating; he’d always been that way.

What wasn’t okay was vulnerability.

“One good thing,” he said, light as he picked at nonexistent lint from his sleeve. Kylo ignored the hitch he heard, pushed it entirely from his mind. “I always imagined myself in uniform. Made this easy enough.”

“And what did you imagine…?” But he couldn’t quite get out the words. Poe’d never mentioned another lover, not a serious one, so if he’d ever imagined anyone—and maybe it was arrogant—Kylo could only assume it was Ben he’d imagined getting married to. Surely there was an answer, but it wasn’t one he could ever expect Poe to give. He withdrew again, CV’s petulant bleeps an effective excuse to retreat. “Never mind.”

“The gray will be good.” Poe sounded decisive. Without the burden of Kylo’s direct attention, his voice grew stronger. How long would it be that way with them? Would they always be on the verge of splitting in two if one scrutinized the other too closely? “Go with that.”

After a moment, Kylo heard the door hiss open, Poe’s steps heavy as he retreated into the hallway. 

His guilt was such that a little more hardly made a difference and yet Poe’s sudden departure was enough to set him trembling. With fury, with futility. It didn’t matter which, just that when CV reached for him, he nearly snapped the droid’s grasping appendage off of his body. “Are you done?” he asked, in lieu of an apology. The droid whined in low, buzzing tones, but he signaled his assent with a weary, mechanical sigh. “Order something in gray. Something simple. I don’t care what.”

All he knew was he had to get out of this office and what he wore to this falsehood of a marriage couldn’t have mattered less to him.

Rey caught him in the doorway, arms crossed, face a blank, stone mask. No doubt she’d seen Poe’s departure and no doubt from her angle it hadn’t been a kind parting.

“You don’t have to say it,” Kylo said. “I already know.”

* 

The door to Kylo’s office chimed and he raised his voice, assuming it was Mitaka with the latest demands General Organa intended to make on behalf of her salivating cadre of information brokers, spies, and analysts. Every day, they sent along a new list of questions they wanted answered, and Kylo grew more tired of it by the hour. Sometimes, they sent the same questions with different phrasings, as though to catch him in a trap.

So obvious and so very annoying.

What he didn’t expect was General Organa herself, small and careworn, a shadow of her former self, striding into the room as though she owned it, a pad in hand, and Poe trailing behind her, a metaphorical thundercloud around his head.

They hadn’t seen one another since before this whole marriage debacle began; Kylo realized with a start that that really wasn’t so unusual. They’d gone longer not seeing one another in the course of normal operations after all. It only seemed like it had been forever on account of the circumstances. And the slight felt intentional rather than a mere artifact of their busy lives.

“General,” he said, rising, his hands splayed across his desk. He inclined his head slightly, imperceptible to anyone except him and entirely deniable as a gesture of respect. “To what do I owe this distinct and unexpected pleasure?” 

Both of his mother’s eyebrows climbed her forehead and her mouth drew downward in a dry, unimpressed frown. She slapped the pad repeatedly against her palm before passing it to him. Then, gesturing toward the three seats at Kylo’s desk, she sat. “The press release for your upcoming nuptials,” she explained, though by the time she said it, Kylo had already flicked the pad on and had begun reading. “If you both are going to insist on going forward with this.”

A tight smile settled on his mouth, his distaste evident in the curl of his lip. “You’re welcome for that, by the way.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. It wasn’t amusement exactly, but Kylo couldn’t parse what it was instead. “You made your point, but nobody’s thanking you. It wouldn’t even have come to this if you gave a damn about what anyone else in the galaxy thinks of you.”

“Nothing I say or do is going to change the facts no matter how much you’d prefer to bury them.” He pressed his hand to his stomach and sat. Leaning forward, he peered at her as closely as he dared. “Not every problem is solved by hiding the truth. I would have thought you’d learned that lesson some years ago.” His lip curled. “So that line you fed Mitaka about ‘stability…’” Oh, it became so very clear what this was really about. He should have known.

They’d had this argument often enough that Leia’s eyes only glimmered a little bit; her nose only flared so much. But the moment of silence she had to take was damning enough evidence that he’d struck true. It wouldn’t change her mind, but reminding her of what had happened when she’d tried to hide her true heritage might stall her for a moment, give Kylo a position of strength from which to make demands.

One demand anyway.

“I don’t know why you were so determined to save me from…” Kylo’s hand sliced through the air. “…all of this, bu—”

That she only spoke in dry, irritated amusement said so much about her self-control. Given how much of her anger he felt, raging and bubbling just below the deceptive tranquility of her expression, he fully expected her to raise her voice at the very least. “You really can’t guess?”

“But you can’t save me. I can’t save me. _Poe_ can’t save me. I can only give the best testimony I can and then pay for the crimes I’ve committed in whatever fashion the Republic sees fit to dole out its punishment. I’ve accepted that. You can call this a step toward stability if you’d like, but pretending anything other than closure will help the Republic…? It’s beneath us.”

“Snoke—”

“—is dead. I’m not. Even you have to see that doesn’t add up to justice.”

Leia rolled her eyes and her mouth thinned in displeasure. “Then why did you agree to this? If you knew it was one of my mad schemes to see my son just a little bit safer in the eyes of the people he’s now helping.”

“Well, it certainly is that.”

“You chose Poe deliberately to make me back off. I’m backing off.” She lifted her hands in defeat. “You can stop this at any time.”

“But you thought it would help. There has to be a reason for that. If Poe and I want to do this…” And Kylo should not have wanted to do this, not at all, and the general should have talked Poe out of it from the start.

Leia sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It might help. People like redemption stories. If someone like you…” She shrugged. “You may think yourself a lost cause, but I don’t and you’ll have to forgive an old woman her desire to see her only family survive past the point of his usefulness to his Republic interrogators. If someone else can see the good in you, that’ll make it harder for them to turn you into a scapegoat.”

Acid ripped across his torso, climbed his throat and tore at his esophagus. He could throw so many viler words back at her. It was what he would have done before, back when Snoke’s lingering influence amplified his anger and validated his paranoia. He’d spent so long with that creature in his head that he still didn’t quite know how he should have responded. Then he looked at Poe, who studiously avoided looking at him in return, and he knew that whatever else he wanted right now, it wasn’t a fight. Thinking of Rey’s damnable insistence that he turn, Leia’s acceptance of it, Poe’s acquiescence despite everything that couldn’t be fixed by word or deed, he said, “At what cost?” _And too bad you’re letting the best man in the Resistance martyr himself to that pointless cause. Talk him out of it. Talk me out of it. Don’t just talk yourself out of it._

Leia turned a sad, cynical smile at him. “You said it yourself, I told worse lies for lower stakes. It was only my career on the line the whole time I kept Anakin Skywalker’s significance to me a secret. All this is just a love story. Everyone loves a love story.”

“We’re not—” But the words stuck in his throat. He could lie to himself about so many things. This one shouldn’t have been so difficult to accomplish. Not when doing so would be doing both of them a favor. It would be cleaner if he lied and easier for Poe. “Do you think it’ll help?

 _Say it won’t_ , he thought. _Tell me this’ll only save my skin. Don’t tell me it might get me what I want here_.

“You know as well as I do that politics is perception,” she replied, knowing. She was thinking of Drethida, of every First Order territory he’s tried to help over the last months of his confinement here,. “You always stand a better chance when people like and trust you.”

He glanced down at the press release, remembering that this was the purpose of this meeting, not rehashing old, ragged wounds.

_Ben Solo and Poe Dameron were wed in a private ceremony at an undisclosed New Republic base on New Alderaan. Officiated by General Leia Organa, it was attended by a handful of their closest compatriots. They exchanged—_

It read so cold, so clinical. Yet even so, his heart threatened to crack his sternum in two. This was his life stretching out before him, offering tantalizing possibilities that were not and never should have belonged to him. His vision blurred until he blinked and blinked again. It was an ugly lie and he wanted to believe it could be true anyway.

— _reconnected during reunification proceedings. Since then, they have worked tirelessly undo the damage the First Order did to the galaxy_.

There were still a few empty spaces in the note, places where he and Poe could put their own words if they so chose. Or, more likely, would have words put for them. Or maybe the wordsmiths in his mother’s propaganda wing couldn’t make anything sound plausible and they were floundering nearly as much as Kylo was. It was a comforting enough thought, made him feel less alone in this.

He still didn’t give a damn about protecting himself with rose petals and romance, but he thought of Drethida and what he could accomplish if someone, anyone, saw him as more than the First Order boogeyman he was allowing himself to be portrayed as by every media outlet in the galaxy. If one good thing could come out of this, maybe it was that. His mother was right; his own methods had earned him nothing. Maybe this would gain something for the galaxy. Even Poe would have considered that a worthwhile goal.

“You think this is going to work?” he asked, lifting the pad. “The press release?”

Irritation twisted Leia’s lips. He didn’t need to tell her it was garbage, he could tell. She wouldn’t have brought it to him in the state it was if she didn’t want him to argue with her about it.

This, at least, felt like safe ground over which to argue. And so, it seemed, did Poe, since he finally opened his mouth.

“I thought it was terrible, too.” Poe huffed a bitter laugh, the sound of it caught in the back of his throat. “I still say you just film the damned thing and give that to the journalists. I trust my sabacc face way more than I trust… that. Besides, no one’s going to sympathize with this. I can sell it.”

Leia’s brow arched. “You really want that much of your private life out there?”

Poe scrutinized his nails, scraped at a splash of oil, dark and flaking, that had dried beneath one of them. “It’ll be out there anyway. Might as well milk it for all its worth now when the effect will be the strongest.”

“I never knew you had a mind for politics.” Her voice might as well have been scorched by a lifetime spent beneath twin suns for how dry it was.

“Don’t go insulting me now, General.” Finished with his hands, he offered her his undivided attention. It gave Kylo enough leeway to study the tense set of Poe’s shoulders and the tightness around his eyes. “I just trust Suralinda to craft a better story than whoever you’ve got writing this nonsense. If I’m going through with it, I want it to count. And I think Ben would agree.” HIs voice went low and pointed. “Wouldn’t you?”

Kylo startled a bit at his inclusion in Poe’s argument and scrambled for a response that wasn’t just _can we call the whole thing off, please. I was lying when I said I’d do it. I won’t do it_. “I would—”

“See?” Poe’s hand sliced through the air. “Even Ben thinks this thing is a stupid idea.”

Tamping down on his instinctive rush of annoyance, Kylo drew in a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll do whatever Poe wants.”

“Too bad you weren’t thinking about what I might have wanted before,” Poe snapped, deceptively light in the face of the heavy weight the words bore. “We wouldn’t be in this mess now, would we?” He shifted as though his skin was too small, as though he were supporting a cause he didn’t believe in and he knew it. That wasn’t even so far from the truth, was it?

“So say no now,” he answered, equally snappish. But though he held back, there was a dangerous edge to it that they all recognized. It was something, Kylo was beginning to realize, that was intrinsic in him, couldn’t be pinned elsewhere, not even on Snoke. He would never be a calm man, but neither was Poe nor his mother nor even his father. His uncle had played at it, came the closest of all of them, but look at where he’d ended up. “Nothing’s stopping you.”

“Nothing’s stopping _you_ from doing the same thing,” Poe retorted. “You started it. You could end it.”

Kylo opened his mouth to defend himself and snapped it shut again. The truth of the matter was, he’d already broken so many oaths that the thought of breaking another one was untenable. He told himself he’d do whatever he could for places like Drethida. This, he hadn’t realized before, was something he could do. It was something he could try anyway. And maybe Poe would understand. Or maybe he wouldn’t.

He had to remain vigilant against every misstep. What was easy, he’d learned, was never the right thing to do.

Calling it off felt like that.

Even so, he couldn’t trust himself, but he could trust his mother’s intentions. He could trust Poe’s determination. If they agreed to it, painful and stupid and cynical though it was, he could, too. “It’s not forever,” he said, looking to Leia for confirmation. There was a part of him wanted forever, a selfish, small part of him. “I won’t…”

But Kylo didn’t know what he wouldn’t do and he couldn’t demand Poe’s trust.

“I’ll follow your lead,” he finished. At least that much was true.

Poe’s lips thinned and nodded. That would have to do for now. It was all Kylo could bring himself to give.

Even though he meant something else entirely, something a lot more like, _I’ll do what you want, anything you want_.

“So it’s settled?” Poe asked, distant and cool, clipped. “We’re doing this?”

Leia gestured vaguely and smiled, rueful, not at all like she was happy with the situation either despite having won. “We could do it now if you’re really so determined. Time’s not the issue here.”

“How romantic,” Poe said, pushing himself to his feet like a spring that had been coiled too tightly. His figure seemed almost to cut through the air with every tiny twitch as he waited for this meeting to finally end. Even now, he wouldn’t walk away until he was dismissed.

It was very clear that he wanted to be dismissed.

“There’s not a whole lot of room for textbook romances in war time,” Leia pointed out.

The anger that flashed in Poe’s eyes suggested that maybe that was the wrong thing to say. “That might be true,” he answered after his jaw clenched and relaxed a couple of times. “But I think my parents would disagree.” He rolled his shoulder and squinted at the wall even though he wouldn’t find any answers there. “Besides, this ain’t war time anymore unless I imagined all those months of negotiations we suffered through.”

“You know what I mean.” But though Poe was unhappy—and unhappy with her specifically—she remained sympathetic.

“Yeah.” He nodded and licked his lips. “I guess I do.” Everything about him screamed, _but I don’t have to like it_. “You know what? You’re right. Let’s get this over with.” His head turned slightly in Kylo’s direction, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look Kylo in the eyes. “How about tomorrow? Tomorrow sound good to everyone?”

 _No_ , Kylo thought, _no, not at all_. But he inclined his head. “I said I’d follow your lead. I meant that.”

That wasn’t what Kylo really wanted to say, but he didn’t know how to say anything else. And it had to do, because Poe took Kylo’s words and was gone.

* 

_Beep beep beep._

Kylo could count the number of times he’d heard that sound from within the confines of his own quarters on one hand—and he desperately preferred it that way. People bothered him enough in that kind prison they called an office. There, he knew to expect it, prepared for it, did what he had to do in order to not snap in frustration at his visitors. If they started following him here…

He wasn’t sure how that would go.

Needless to say, Kylo was more than a little surprised and annoyed to hear that rarely-used chime followed almost immediately by a priority override that Kylo had forgotten had been installed on it back when he’d first been assigned to these rooms. To complete the unexpected picture, Poe strode in and acted like he owned the place; at this, Kylo was still surprised, but now in an entirely different way.

After all, Poe’d always pushed boundaries. And at one time, Kylo had loved that about him. At another, it had stymied Kylo, ruining plan after plan he’d set while he didn’t let himself remember that he knew better than to basically dare Poe to undermine him. Now, Kylo wasn’t sure what to think, except to say this all felt very familiar. So he stood and pretended he wasn’t feeling exposed in this spare nothing of a room while Poe paced just inside the doorway.

“Hey,” he said, eyes following Poe’s progress back and forth and back again across the small stretch of space he alloted himself. His hair hung in his eyes and he, as always, wouldn’t look at Kylo, his attention sweeping in comparable arcs across the floor around Kylo’s feet.

This was going to be a very convincing wedding if he kept that up.

“Yeah, so,” Poe said, hand flapping through the air, “this is happening.” It was, perhaps, a miracle that he stilled for even a moment as he said this.

“It is.”

A bitter note twisted and elongated every syllable of his confirmation. “Tomorrow.”

Kylo swallowed around the lump in his throat. His throat clicked, dry. “So you decided.”

“‘So I decided,’” Poe said, vehement. “I…” His voice cracked on a sigh and he turned away entirely. His back bunched beneath the thin linen of his shirt, and his hand, scrubbing at the back of his neck, seemed almost to shake. “Why would you do this to me knowing how I—”

He cut himself off with a vicious cruelty that Kylo didn’t quite know how to match anymore. It wasn’t that the impulse didn’t dwell inside of him. A small seed of discontent and wrath always nurtured itself in his heart, one he carefully avoided cultivating for fear of it spreading as easily as it had before. Of course, if he was being entirely honest, he’d admit this whole scheme was a cruelty, his ultimatum, vicious, too. _I’ll only marry Poe Dameron, the man I once loved, who couldn’t possibly love me back anymore. Let me throw that relationship back in his face. Let me make him pretend we could still be what we should have been all along_.

Despite Poe’s best attempts to hide his thoughts, Kylo could read them anyway—and he didn’t even need the Force to do it. No coerced confession was required here. Not this time. Not with the flashes of despair that twitched across Poe’s face—first in the lines around his mouth, then his cheeks, and his eyes, most of all in the frost-dusted depths of his eyes.

_Why would you do this to me knowing how I feel about you?_

And he’d made every one of those feelings abundantly clear, hadn’t he? Disdain, rage, disappointment, utter and whole, never to be unlaced or unwoven or undone. Somewhere along the way, Poe had mostly learned how to put them aside and he certainly knew how to do what he believed was right at great personal cost. Because even plagued by disdain, rage, and disappointment, he was here. He was willing to bind himself to Kylo in ways that Kylo didn’t deserve and shouldn’t have wanted. For a Resistance, a Rebellion, a Republic that no longer need him, he did this.

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t you—” And before Kylo could finish, before Poe allowed himself to finish, he spun and crossed the floor, so fast that Kylo’s thoughts seemed sluggish in response, starting and ending with, _oh shit, he’s going to punch me_ and _I deserve worse_ and—

But then Poe’s mouth crashed against his and his fingers wound tight in Kylo’s robes and Kylo tasted whisky on his lips, Corellian maybe, or maybe he was only imagining that because it was what they drank back on Yavin 4 when the worst thing Kylo had ever done was steal the good liquor his dad sometimes freighted from one corner of the wretched galaxy to another. It was good enough that Kylo forgot everything except the feel of Poe pressed against him, the urgency with which he tried to unite them, like if he grasped hard enough, they would fuse together and could pretend that was all it took to stop fighting for five minutes.

Just five minutes.

But only if Poe succeeded.

And he tried. He threw everything he had at Kylo and then some. It was exactly like how he remembered it being, the kiss, and nothing at all like it at the same time. So much less and more than their early, furtive fumblings, and those later, confident swipes of tongue and teeth, he could have slotted it in anywhere in their history and it would have fit—it shouldn’t have fit, his mind insisted this wasn’t theirs anymore, it was an aberration, it wasn’t fair or right to have this, it was a mistake. The rasp of Poe’s stubble was new, maybe; he’d always kept to scrupulously close shaves before, every inch the good New Republic Navy man he so wanted to be and never quite was. But all the things that mattered, the scalding heat of Poe’s body, the scrape of his nails down Kylo’s neck, those were touchstones Kylo could cling to and really, really shouldn’t have.

Kylo did it anyway and his lungs ached because he didn’t dare pull away; he knew Poe would come to his senses if he did and that was the last thing he wanted right now, now when everything felt better and right and true, so true it threatened to cleave Kylo’s heart into two pieces along the fault where Ben Solo ended and Kylo Ren began.

An illusion, of course. There was no part of Ben Solo that wasn’t also Kylo Ren. The bits and pieces of the latter couldn’t be sliced away from the former. Kylo had tried.

Kylo, too, had failed.

Poe’s fingers tightened in his hair, wound in the long strands of it until his scalp stung, until Kylo nearly hissed, until Kylo raised his own hands to—

Poe moaned, broken, impatient, against Kylo’s mouth and then pulled away as though burned, fast enough that he left Kylo bereft, exposed, so very vulnerable that Kylo lowered his eyes, lowered his head, did not dare face Poe head-on. What would Poe see if he did? And how much more would Poe hate him for it?

Stepping back, Poe wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, lips pink and wet, leaving a glossy trail across his knuckles. There was something like revulsion in his eyes, something like longing for a thing that never was or never could be again and hating himself and Kylo for it. “I don’t want your apologies,” he spat, cheeks flushing. “It’s too late for that.”

Unbidden, he heard Poe’s voice in his head; Kylo had no way of knowing if it was intentional or not, his own imaginings or not. All he knew was how real it sounded, how easily it matched the regret that bled into every inch of the room through Poe’s presence.

 _I thought it would be different_.

The words doused Kylo in frigid water; he could have told Poe how little difference a kiss made, saved them both the trouble.

Except Poe was already turning on his heels and abandoning the room as though it held a contagion or a bomb or Kylo fucking Ren himself. Poe said nothing else, but he didn’t need to in order to make himself understood perfectly well.

Long after Poe left, Kylo sat, elbows planted on knees, his mind full of static and noise and self-recriminations that would’ve given the blame Poe’d already parceled out a run for its credits.

All the while, Kylo couldn’t help but ponder, too, how much more cavernous his rooms had been before Poe’d brought so much daring, damning life into it.

He sat, unmoving, and he thought and he found no answers in the Force or anywhere else.

He wasn’t sure why he expected otherwise: the Force never really answered him anymore.

Not in any way that mattered.

All that mattered right now to Kylo was the entrenched desire to unlearn the taste of Poe’s mouth, the soft warmth of his fingers against Kylo’s skin; in the years since they’d parted, he’d forgotten everything and now it all came rushing back, every sense and muscle memory he carried in his body.

Poe’d worked his way into him and now Kylo didn’t know how to get him out.


	2. Chapter 2

Kylo tugged at the collar of his robes of deep gray silk, thick-woven and textured in a way that cut down the sheen of the fabric, and fought the grimace that threatened to form. CV had gone with something not-quite-Alderaanian, thank the Force, but something close enough to it that Kylo still felt confined by the weight and drape of it. Still, Leia hadn’t said anything when she saw him and if anyone would have it was her, so he felt reasonably comfortable assuming nobody would notice or care about its provenance.

Except Poe, whose eyes cut to him as he stood far, far too close for comfort, he noticed. His gaze branded him, held him in place, cracked open his ribs and exposed him while he scrambled to tuck everything he felt into the darkest recesses of his heart. They only stood before a handful of individuals. His mother, Suralinda, the droids, Rey and Finn and Rose, Black Squadron, but it might as well have been a cathedral stacked wall-to-wall with judges, juries and executioners. Rey, stone still. Finn, dubious and squinting. Rose, sharp-eyed and unhappy. They were, as sad as it was to say, some of the people closest to him.

 _There is a point to all this_ , he reminded himself. But now that he stood here, that point felt weak, weaker even than it had before. _This isn’t permanent. It isn’t even long-term. It’s just perception. This’ll all just… fade. One day. Eventually, none of this will matter_.

Poe smiled then, a distraction, and faced Kylo, and winked, too. Kylo knew it for the lie it was, but he felt affection there anyway and—

And Kylo was glad that Poe’d chosen a ceremony that didn’t require the recitation of vows, because Kylo wasn’t sure he could give voice to anything right then, let alone something as deeply personal as a vow. Instead, Poe handed him a trinket and Kylo offered one in return while Leia presided, a forced smile on her face. They each then gave the trinkets to her to set aside and resumed the push-pull of giving and receiving, giving and receiving, until the trays beside them were emptied, each piece mingling on a third to be returned to them as a pair. Ideally, these would have been mementoes from a long courtship, things they’d stashed away that meant something to them that they now wanted to return to the person who’d created that very meaning.

But none of the gifts they bestowed upon one another meant a damned thing in any context related to them. Anything of personal significance was lost to time, to destruction, to circumstance and fate. How could they even create meaning for one another when so much of that meaning could only ever paper over the pain Kylo had caused.

Heart in throat, Kylo finally offered a plain, platinum band handed to him just before the ceremony by Leia. He didn’t ask where she got it. He didn’t particularly want to know. It might have been entirely new, forged for this event at Leia’s instruction. Or its history may have been of a more tragic nature. There was no telling around here, except to say the Resistance knew how to make due with the resources at hand.

Poe took it and, barely hesitating, slid it on his finger. His eyes gleamed now and if Kylo didn’t know better, he would have been fooled into thinking Poe was happy. There was none of the angry man of yesterday in his visage. All Kylo saw instead was vicious, all-consuming joy, like he’d transmuted his fury into elation for the sake of this event because he wanted everyone to know just how truly ecstatic he was. It was a spiteful, vengeful sort of happiness, the kind of happiness that could cut the heart out of a person if they weren’t careful.

In turn, Poe teased a necklace from beneath his uniform coat, pulled the thin metal chain over his head and unclasped it in quick, practiced motions, like he took it on and off every day when Kylo knew he never, ever removed that necklace. A ring slipped free and fell into his palm, of course, and not just any ring. _It was the ring_.

And Poe had worn it for as long as Kylo had known him. Longer, probably. He knew that ring intimately, had occasionally traced the length of chain that protected it after they’d shared one another’s company in Poe’s cramped bedroom on Yavin 4 or in an even more cramped motel room on Hosnian Prime while Poe was on furlough. Poe would smile when he did that, sad, but he never gave voice to the thoughts Kylo had known he’d harbored, vague, meaningless fancies that bubbled and frothed every time they were together.

 _This is yours if you’d take it_.

It never meant anything, not really. Poe guarded his heart about as well as he guarded his life—which was to say, not at all. He should have wanted to offer it to someone who made him recklessly, unreservedly happy. Instead, he’d chosen Kylo, who sometimes made Poe laugh when he was too disgruntled to articulate in words just how much he hated the early morning sunlight on the days he had to return to Luke’s school. Kylo had repaid that loyalty in blood and ash, proving just how foolish Poe’d been to trust him in the first place, to love him. Even at the time, he’d offered Poe so little.

A chill broke out across Kylo’s body, sweat prickling at the back of his neck and his temples and across his palms. His hands shook, so he did the only thing he knew how to do and tightened them into fists at his side. He turned his head and was grateful that Suralinda and her cam droid were behind him, unable to focus on his face. Whatever was there couldn’t have been good, because Poe widened his eyes and jerked his head slightly. His lips firmed. And then he relaxed all at once, an example for Kylo to follow. He mouthed, “It’s okay,” and, oh, how well that would play for the audience of idiots this gesture was intended for. He saw it all now in the informative captions that would accompany the slides of this moment: _Poe Dameron, conscientious newlywed, comforts his nervous lover._

After what felt like the longest seconds of his life, Kylo reached out to take the ring from Poe’s outstretched hand. Expecting Poe to drop it in his palm, he found himself shocked when Poe’s hand clasped around his own and pushed the ring onto his finger, fire trailing every smooth stroke of his touch. It slid easily onto his fourth finger. Given who the ring had originally belonged to, it probably shouldn’t have fit on any of his fingers at all.

Nausea roiled through him. He’d had it resized for of this. Instead of finding any other ring—why didn’t he just find any other ring—he’d thrown his mother’s away on a fraud. And a fraud perpetrated by a man he didn’t even particularly like. _What’s the matter with you_ , he asked himself, wild, desperate. _Why do you care so much about my mother’s foolish ideas? What the hell is in it for you?_

Fighting to still the shaking, he watched as Poe’s touch lingered, his thumb rubbing across the surface of the ring, absent. If Kylo didn’t know any better, he’d have called the quiet look on Poe’s face contentment. There was no way in hell what Poe felt was contentment.

According to a brief he’d been given earlier, kissing wasn’t a traditional part of this ceremony; Kylo expected he chose it for that reason, too, so convenient when you didn’t have to kiss or speak and the only expression of feeling was through layer and layer of symbolism instead of words neither of them had ever known how to say nor through actions they know longer knew how to perform. But Poe surprised him yet again, lifting Kylo’s hand to press a kiss against the base of his palm, right where Kylo’s pulse pounded most obviously. It quickened under Poe’s chaste, gentle ministrations and it was impossible to believe Poe didn’t feel the change, damning proof if ever there was any.

Kylo almost, _almost_ ripped his hand free, like he’d been burned or bitten or stabbed.

There were no celebratory shouts, no congratulatory remarks for the happy couple. They invented smiles for Suralinda’s cam droid and trusted she could embellish a more romantic fiction with holos and vids and exaggerated quotes from onlookers. She would make this event feel truer than it was, touching and sober, perfectly encapsulated for the masses as a true declaration of their partnership

Most of the others filtered out of the room, leaving Leia and Poe and Kylo behind. Their closest compatriots remained to speak with Suralinda, of course. Rose and Rey and Finn, Poe’s squadmates. Even from across the room, Kylo could see they were trying their best. Even so, the absences were conspicuous and Kylo wondered how Suralinda would fill them. What, for example, would Poe’s father have had to say? And did Poe regret that he couldn’t be here? Or was he glad? Did Kes know the truth?

Kylo couldn’t easily imagine Kes’s reaction, but he was perfectly happy to have the guesswork instead of proof. He’d always respected the man for how present he was in Poe’s life, for how down-to-earth he was, for how little he felt the need to be everywhere other than where he was. Not like Kylo’s father and not, in a lot of ways, like his mother either.

“We’ve secured larger quarters for you both,” Leia said, somber. “If you need any help moving your personal effects…”

“Nope,” Poe said, quick and clean, the words out before he had time to think about them, along with a sharp, decisive nod. “I can handle it.”

“Thank you.” Her hands fluttered around her torso, unsure what to do with themselves. After a pause: “Both of you.” She looked as though she wanted to say more and it was only years of diplomatic training that stopped her. Regret curved the corner of her mouth, regret and relief; she’d given in before, but Kylo could tell she still thought something useful would come of this. “Nothing is ever easy, but I hope… I hope it all works out.”

And with that, she stepped around them, too, leaving the room empty—or seemingly so. Even with Poe standing beside him, Kylo felt utterly alone.

“Well,” Poe said, feigning a casualness there was no way he could actually be feeling, “shit.”

Kylo said nothing for a moment. Then, “No kidding.”

“‘Hope it all works out?’ Let’s just hope we know what we’re doing,” Poe said, grim.

“Yeah,” Kylo replied, equally grim, “because that’s never failed us before.”

Poe huffed in what might have been dark amusement and slapped Kylo on the back. Nothing of Poe’s anger remained from last night. Kylo had to wonder if that was because there was now no getting out of it now that it was done. He’d committed. And Poe was always at his most dangerous when he made a decision.

It reminded him uncomfortably of Poe’s remarks at Tuanul, defiant and unconcerned despite the very real fear that had curled around his heart and squeezed so tightly. That terror had been nearly enough to choke the sarcastic retorts that had always fallen so easily from his lips. But even that hadn’t been enough to stop him in the end.

“Don’t go getting all fatalistic on me now, Ben,” he said, cajoling. “One of us has to be an optimist here.”

Kylo’s eyebrow climbed his forehead, but he had no good response to offer in return, no words that would help the situation or alleviate Poe’s aggrieved determination to see this through. Better, he thought, to keep his mouth shut. He’d already opened it enough in the last week to last a lifetime.

As Kylo jerked his thumb over his shoulder, the ring glinted in the light and struck him deep in the chest anew. He’d already forgotten about its presence. Though the weight of it was real, it sat so perfectly on his finger that it might as well have been a part of him. Disconcerted, he dropped his hand to his side.

Poe’s eyes fell to the ground at Kylo’s feet. Kylo didn’t dare ask what he saw there. Probably, he saw nothing.

Either way, he didn’t want to know. And he was afraid that Poe would tell him now that Poe had taken every other choice away from himself in this whole debacle. What did he have to lose honestly, by being honest to Kylo? Very, very little. And he gained retribution at the very least, some small petty victory that could be bought with nothing more costly than a few well-timed words.

It was going to be a long few months, a year, multiple years—however long it would be before they decided they could anull this particular decision and get back to the lives they were meant to live.

Better to get this worst, first step over with, he supposed.

“I’ll get my stuff ready.”

* 

“There are separate rooms,” Poe said, unexpected, from the doorway. Kylo hadn’t heard him come in, but iron determination stopped him from startling as he stepped into the tiny living area and saw Poe standing there, his eyes traveling from door to door to door to settle on the couch that dominated the center of the room.

“Yeah,” Kylo answered, pointing at each door in turn. “Two bedrooms and a ’fresher.” The words sounded asinine to his own ears, but he couldn’t take them back, wish though he might to have said something more profound than that.

“Generous of General Organa,” he said, carefully neutral. “I didn’t know the base had any quarters this big.”

They weren’t, not by any real standards. The bedrooms were cramped and barely held a single-wide bed, let alone the space needed to move around or share with another person. But they were private, the rooms, and nobody would know they weren’t sleeping together in them. Given enough planning, they could pretend they lived entirely alone if they needed to. They could build their schedules around never seeing one another despite living within spitting distance. _When_ , Kylo’s traitorous brain thought _, they would need to_.

It seemed inevitable to him that something would go wrong, whole scenarios playing out for him in his mind’s eye. Shattering words lobbed across the scant stretch of space. Shattered glasses, spilled whisky, silent recriminations, loud recriminations, recriminations that slipped like knives through the vulnerable spaces between ribs. There were so many ways this could go wrong.

He itched just looking at Poe, who was so tightly wound that Kylo felt a sympathetic ache in his shoulders, his lower back. Poe looked as though he would snap in two under the lightest of pressure. Kylo really wasn’t a calm man by any standard of the definition, but this close to Poe under these circumstances, he danced even more recklessly on the point of a knife. Turning away again, pretending he still had to sort out the room he’d chosen, the one he thought Poe would want less, he said, “I’ll get out of your way.”

And though Poe sighed, he didn’t stop Kylo from fleeing.

* 

They fell into an uneasy rhythm over the course of that week, one that required them to circle one another warily to avoid upsetting the careful balance laid between them,a foundation built brick by unspoken brick. They started to learn the vagaries of their work schedules, when and how to avoid one another without seeming to. It wasn’t impossible to maneuver in those first few days, but it was uncomfortable. One day, it would be easier. Until then, they ran into one another sometimes on the way to the ’fresher or came back just as the other was leaving and every time it happened something in Kylo’s chest seized up. His hackles rose. Sweat sometimes prickled at his hairline and his pulse throbbed heavy and fast in his ears.

Even in trying to avoid Poe, he couldn’t get away.

Poe existed at the edge of his awareness constantly, a splinter beneath the surface of his consciousness, irritating and painful. Though they began to know one another’s habits and avoidance slowly became easier, their run-ins fewer, Kylo only grew more annoyed. Theirs was an intimacy painted in the negative spaces of their lives. One day, they would have to act like they gave a damn about one another and on that day, Kylo wasn’t sure Poe would be able to do it.

His mother thought his life relied on this; he knew Drethida probably did.

But he didn’t know how to _say_ any of this.

Which was why, perhaps, Kylo snapped as viciously as he did when he heard Poe swear under his breath in the living area and went to investigate. He wasn’t supposed to be back yet, his shift not done for another thirty minutes, and if he intended to play by these new unwritten rules of theirs, he should at least play fair. “What?”

Poe’s attention lifted and he scowled, waving a pad around in pointless explanation. Kylo caught glimpses of words on the screen, but he couldn’t exactly glean the source of Poe’s unhappiness from it. The number one job of most pads was to contain words, lots and lots of them. Just seeing them wasn’t enough to explain the issue. “Orders,” Poe said, still not illuminating Kylo as to the details he found so unpleasant. “For us.”

Kylo’s brows knit together. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” Every so often, Leia did send them on missions together. It was rare, sure, but not all that unusual. Nothing that should’ve upset Poe like this. But, he supposed, that was Before. This was After. Stepping forward, he was unsure whether he ought to engage or not, but Poe handed over the pad with minimal fuss and waited in dark, obvious silence for the shoe to drop for Kylo, too.

“These are… tickets.” He read further and ignored that the tickets were for the New Alderaanian Opera House. “And reservations.”

“Yep.” Poe’s voice practically sprung through the room, bursting out with so much false cheer that Kylo almost winced. That kind of tone galloped, ran roughshod over any argument Kylo might have made in its favor. It was the kind of tone that left little room in which to maneuver.

“At least it’s not Canto Bight?” And now he did wince. That was of little consolation even to him.

“We weren’t supposed to—” He sighed and paced the half of the living area that Kylo wasn’t occupying. “Who would send us _a wedding gift?_ ”

Kylo could think of a rare handful of individuals who might, but he suspected Poe didn’t really care about the particulars. Who did it mattered less than how they’d manage to survive that much time alone together. Tickets. Reservations. _Honeymoons_. Why hadn’t they considered the very real possibility that something like this would happen?

Kylo read the missive from Leia again, mouth twitching. The least charitable part of him wondered if this was Leia’s way of punishing them. It wasn’t an order, not exactly, but both he and Poe knew how to read between the lines. _If you’re trying to sell it, you have to sell it. - LO_

Frowning, he tossed the pad onto the couch they rarely made use of.

“There’s too much work to do,” Poe continued, perhaps in an attempt to justify his reticence to himself. He sounded entirely plausible, entirely sincere in his desire to remain entirely loyal to the work they did here. And yet, for whatever reason, he didn’t believe he could say no to this. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered arguing at all. “We can’t just take a vacation while everyone else is trying to rebuild the Republic.”

“That’s true,” Kylo answered.

“General Organa,” and here, he huffed in displeasure, “seems to believe otherwise.”

 _And you’ve never disobeyed an order from her in your life._ Obviously, Poe wanted a reason to agree to this. Not because he wanted a vacation or tickets to the opera or whatever else this gift entailed, but because he’d learned somewhere along the way the value of unpleasant sacrifices and still needed justification for it, a reason to ignore the voice in his head that said, _no_. “Perhaps this is how we rebuild the Republic. Since we got ourselves into this mess.” He thought of Drethida, thought of how Leia said a person’s perception of you changed things, thought of how much more he could do if he wasn’t despised. He might have told Poe about his work, but the words wouldn’t come; there was no way he’d care about Kylo’s sob story anyway. It was pointless.

This whole thing was pointless.

Poe’s eyes widened. His hands tightened into fists at his side. “ _We?!_ You’re—”

“ _Or_ perhaps we tell our generous benefactor to shove it and return this gift as graciously as we know how to and forget about it entirely.” Kylo shrugged and looked away. “Because you’re right. We’re needed here. Suralinda’s droids could follow us around if we really have to offer more proof.” In all honesty, it would probably be fine. They’d get points for dedication if nothing else.

“Do you think General Organa will go for that?”

“I don’t think she cares, but if it makes you feel better…”

Poe scoffed, disgusted, and scrubbed his hand across his jaw and the back of his neck. “How are you so calm about this, man? We’ll have to pretend we’re…”

“I thought you said you could pretend for the cause?” It was, in immediate retrospect, a taunt too far. The only cause Poe was concerned with here was Leia’s—and how truly devoted could he have been to it? Make her son safer? The same son who’d done what he’d done? This wasn’t a cause; it was returning a favor. Sure, he was loyal to her, but that loyalty didn’t extend to him. Not anymore. Throwing that in Poe’s face… might not have been the smartest thing to do.

The muscles in Poe’s cheeks jumped; his jaw clenched. His body wound itself so tightly that Kylo worried he might snap. And Kylo was not the man to put him back together, not in the least. He would probably only make things worse if he tried. But issuing a challenge, maybe that would work. Maybe that would keep this thing together long enough to see this through to the end. Give him something to focus on, he’d be okay.

 _A few months. It’ll only be a few months. No matter what you thought before, it won’t last longer than that. It can’t._ Kylo couldn’t do that to Poe. Already Kylo could see the strain. This would not hold for long. Poe would buckle under the weight of it and never even see his own demise coming.

“Look, most couples go on honeymoons,” Kylo pointed out. “And a lot of times, they end up spending all their time in their room doing…” He didn’t flush and didn’t let himself think of what they might have done if this was real, but he got across the implication of it well enough without being vulgar about it. “…I think we could make it work is what I’m saying. There’s nothing I’m doing here that I couldn’t do equally well remotely. We could just hide out in whatever suite we end up in and nobody would bother us.”

_Maybe. Probably not, knowing our luck. But maybe._

“And that’s leaving aside all the people who will be avoiding us because of me,” he added. When Poe stared back at him, blank-faced, Kylo brushed his hand over his eyes and drew in a deep breath. A bubble of exasperation flared in his chest, hot, expanding so quickly that Kylo couldn’t keep ahead of it. “I’m not trying to make you look like an idiot or hurt you more than I already have, okay? I’m not going to turn on you or insist you pretend more than you have to. I know what I am and I know who you are and you’re right. This is my fault. But we’re here now and we can do this and then move on with our lives. We lie low here. We lie low in a hotel room in New Aldera City. What difference does it make?”

Poe’s mouth slackened and he peered at Kylo with something approaching suspicion, if not exactly that. It was like he wasn’t sure who he was looking at now and he couldn’t figure out how he felt about it. It would have been a lie to say Kylo wasn’t self-conscious about the scrutiny, but he pretended as best he could that he was unaffected by it. Poe didn’t have to trust him with everything, or even most things, but if he believed Kylo on this one score, they might be able to get through this without killing one another.

Force, if only he’d said no, not offered even the slightest hint that he’d do it instead of thoughtlessly daring Poe to respond. He should have known that Poe would jump in headfirst without thinking or even feeling anything, that if he threw down a gauntlet, it would be picked up even if only for his mother’s sake.

They were stubborn creatures, the pair of them, but Kylo pretended sometimes he still had sense. He should have used it here.

“Why are you okay with this? Seriously, no bullshit?” Poe asked. He wanted to be convinced. Whatever else Poe believed, he wanted this all to be for something. Even a stupid, fake honeymoon could be for _something_.

“Because we’ve already decided to do this. What’s one more thing?” And in a flash of inspiration, he knew just how to do it. It didn’t mean he liked it. It didn’t mean it was true. But maybe this was what Poe needed to hear. He made his voice hard and cold. “None of it is real. It can’t hurt you or me or anyone.” His gaze caught on the ceiling and he had to take another deep breath just to get the only bit of truth out that mattered. “And anyway, there aren’t many terrible things I haven’t done and you’re still standing in front of me right now. What could I possibly do that’s worse than what’s already come to pass?”

There was silence, a long, aching stretch of it, in the aftermath of Kylo’s words. A pin might have dropped and boomed in that silence. Or the sound might have been swallowed up by it, Kylo wasn’t sure. And then: “Kriff,” from Poe, angry and self-directed as he hunched into himself and crossed his arms. “I hope you’re right, Ben. I really do.”

 _Don’t call me Ben,_ he almost barked. That wasn’t the point he was trying to get across, but if Poe was being challenging rather than… whatever he had been being, it was an improvement. Challenging usually got them places anyway, though not always the places Kylo wanted to go.

“I guess we should pack our things,” Poe said, no-nonsense, committed. That switch he flipped, it would break one day, but this was not that day and the shift was immediate. “Get this over with, too.”

Kylo nodded and, only mostly relieved, got to work, too.

* 

New Aldera City would never be the prettiest place in the galaxy. It probably wasn’t even the prettiest place on the planet. A city was a city was a city, after all, but it bore a striking contrast to the Republic base that sat on the flat plains a couple hundred miles to the west of it. Here, the land stood at a higher elevation, foothills at its back, rocky, jagged peaks fanning even further out and curving gracefully around in a protective embrace of the city that was growing up inside of it. Outside of the New Aldera settlement proper, little development had yet taken place and stands of trees occupied many of the rolling hills around it. Perhaps one day, New Aldera City would stretch into the surrounding environs, find a way to coexist peacefully with the landscape, but until then, the land surrounding it remained pristine.

For all the world, it looked like a purposefully kept secret, but Kylo knew it to be the commercial, political, and civic center of New Alderaan. No matter how isolated it seemed, that isolation was an illusion. If they were going to be recognized, it would be here. If anyone were going to bother them, they would bother them here. And though most of New Alderaan’s population chose this place to settle down, there weren’t enough people to simply disappear into the throng, not even dressed as inconspicuously as they were, in simple trader’s garb in shades of drab brown, beige, and black. The whole point of this was to put on a show of their relationship, but now that they were approaching the point of doing just that, the realization of it sent a serrated knife of anxiety ripping through him.

From the otherwise empty magtrain—and thank the Force for that small mercy—Kylo caught glimpses of sparkling lights falling in the dark toward the spaceport in the very heart of the capital; they caught the shine of the various spotlights that guided each transport home. Shuttles, mostly, a few larger trading ships, nothing special to recommend it as an important destination. Though it had been thirty years almost since this planet had been properly settled, it still had so far to go.

“It’s pretty at night,” Poe said, leaning toward the window, inconveniently stretching himself across Kylo’s lap to do so. Ducking his head, he peered up at the sluggish stream of inbound traffic, and though Kylo tried to focus on the rapidly approaching cityscape, its swirling, pristine towers peaceful, all he could do was inhale the scent of Poe’s cologne—comfortable and familiar, despite Kylo having never smelled it before, green and warmly floral, clean—and ached to reach out and touch Poe’s skin, feel the rasp of Poe’s stubble beneath his fingertips. He ached, too, to have earned the right to do so.

It was an ill-considered impulse and Kylo could only shift uncomfortably away from Poe as best he could despite having nowhere to go, shake the thought from his mind and bury it deep down where it couldn’t do any damage. But pushing back into his seat could only accomplish so much without making him entirely, pathetically obvious.

Poe’s gaze cut to him for a moment before he finally resumed his seat. Kylo opened his mouth to offer his own, but Poe beat him to the conversational punch, saying, “Hopefully there won’t be too many people checking in this late.”

“Hopefully,” Kylo agreed, dropping the thought of offering the window seat to lapse into a fitful silence. There was, he reminded himself, work that he could be doing. Anything that took his mind off the warm, radiating heat of Poe’s body beside him would be an improvement.

If nothing else, the disappointment he felt whenever he attempted to make inroads on his work was the perfect distraction from the disappointment he felt here and now about things he had no business being disappointed by. This, at least, he’d survived before.

He tapped at his pad, frowned down at it, and tried to find the right combination of words that would get him what he wanted there, since he could not ever have what he wanted at this very moment. Trapped in a train car as he was, he didn’t have Mitaka to finesse his requests for him. It was considerably harder to keep from merely spouting off in a rage at the latest brush off, this time from one Orin Zelira, Senator Verlaine’s personal aide. He’d only sent the inquiry asking for an audience with her a few hours ago, as soon as Leia had told them they were going to New Aldera City, and he maybe should have known she would be busy, but it still stung.

_Senator Verlaine offers her sincerest apologies, but her calendar is full for the foreseeable future. As such, she will be unable to meet you while you are travelling in the city. Should you wish it, I can get you a meeting with her next month at 10:15 local time. Please respond at your earliest convenience if this opportunity is amenable to you._

He groaned in frustration, dropping the pad in his lap and scrubbing his knuckles across his dry, aching eyes. He should have been happy. A meeting next month was the most he’d been able to secure for himself so far. But he could read between the lines, too. This was a placating gesture at best, a way for Zelira to avoid the stink Kylo might otherwise raise—and probably would have anyway, if he wasn’t so exhausted. In three weeks, maybe the full month, Orin Zelira would very apologetically cancel any meeting set at this moment.

That didn’t stop Kylo from accepting the offer. Just—just in case.

“You okay?” Poe asked.

“Yeah,” Kylo answered. “Fine.”

“Doesn’t look fine.”

“I’m fine. Just—politics.”

“Mmm,” Poe agreed, sharp-eyed. “An Admiral in the New Republic Navy wouldn’t know a thing about that.”

“Are you bored or something? Why do you care?” He narrowed his gaze. “You definitely didn’t before.” _I wish you didn’t now_ , he thought, when he didn’t have anything to show for it.

“I don’t, you’re right,” Poe answered. “But you’re also right that I’m bored. And if we’re going to act married, we should probably know what the other one is up to, shouldn’t we?”

It was a good point, one Kylo had thought he might eventually need to make given Poe’s reticence so far.

Running a frustrated hand through his hair, he said, “I’ve been trying to push through a request for aid to a number of former First Order territories. And the Senate, in its infinite wisdom, has blocked me every step of the way. The Republic pretends it gives a damn, but only the most visibly affected or most immediately useful of them have gotten anything approaching the help they need. And even then it’s only scraps. Now I can’t even get help for one damned system.”

“What system’s that?”

“Dre—” Kylo swallowed around the sudden dryness in his throat. “Drethida. That’s my focus right now.” If Poe asked for more details, Kylo wasn’t sure he could give them.

Not that he asked.

“Never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t have. Not unless you make a habit of reading senatorial reports from closed door meetings that lead nowhere. They’re doing a very good job of making the exact same mistakes the old Republic made. I will say that.”

Poe chewed on his lip, stared openly and curiously at Kylo. He didn’t often look confused—he was far too smart for that—but Kylo might as well have been speaking in a foreign tongue or riddles or backward because Poe didn’t seem to be hearing what Kylo was saying. Or he really did just not care. That was possible, too. Most people didn’t when it came down to it, not when so much of the Republic still struggled.

“Even Senator Verlaine is ignoring my petitions,” he continued, as though defensiveness would get his point across. “I was hoping…”

“You’re… trying to push through aid packages? For First Order territories?” Poe finally asked, skeptical. “How long have you been working on this?” 

“Three months.” And Kylo refused to be embarrassed about it, clenching his jaw as he waited for Poe’s judgment to fall, as it inevitably would. Kylo could do nothing without Poe having an opinion about it. To be fair to Poe, though, he couldn’t do much of anything without anyone having an opinion about it.

Poe’s mouth opened into a small ‘o.’ Kylo thought he might have been about to say something, but then he looked away and closed his mouth. A furrow marred the smooth skin between his eyebrows and the frown he wore was one of consternation.

They passed the rest of the ride in the genuine, lasting silence, a silence that kept Kylo on edge, waiting for an interrogation that never came. Without his work—what more could he do than accept Zelira’s banthashit offer?—or Poe’s own questions to distract him, the scent of Poe’s cologne teased at Kylo’s senses, his warmth, his very presence. Every moment his mind drifted back to what Poe might be thinking, how he was feeling, what they would have to do once they were in public together and had to behave like married, loving individuals. And all of it now wound itself up tightly in what it would mean if he failed. If not even Senator Verlaine, the one person he’d truly hoped would hear him, wouldn’t…

No one ever would. Not with the way things were.

For a trip that was only supposed to take an hour, it felt so much longer than that.

* 

The hotel was silent when they stepped inside, the pall of night falling over it despite how brightly lit it remained. The woman at the front desk barely glanced up at them as they stepped up to the counter; it was studiously done, making Kylo aware that she knew who they were, but he appreciated her discretion all the same, the quiet of her voice, the professional, clipped tone as she handed over their keys and indicated that their bags would be brought up to the suite while they completed check-in procedures.

Few people stood in the lobby and none of them paid either of the new arrivals any mind. Who knew to expect a decorated war hero and the galaxy’s most hated man late at night in a hotel that wasn’t even the most prestigious one in New Aldera? By morning, sure, everyone would be aware. But right now, there was no recognition beyond that offered by the woman.

This would be the last bit of calm they might experience until they return to base.

The woman didn’t seem to notice that Poe’s smile seemed a little wooden, that neither of them touched the other, that the sweet, bantering words Poe spoke rang as false as the soft laughter in his voice. Finally, the woman’s mouth twitched into a charmed, dubious upward slant, won over by the nonsense he spouted that Kylo couldn’t even bear to listen to. Perhaps Poe was better than Kylo gave him credit for and it was only because Kylo knew better that he noticed anything false about it at all. Or maybe, though this was least likely of all, they’d all overestimated the average person’s interest in their personal lives.

“If you need help organizing any excursions,” the woman said, “our concierge service would be delighted to assist you.” Her eyes lingered, considering, on Kylo, perhaps in an attempt to deduce something new about his character that she couldn’t read in the Holonews reports, perhaps merely because she couldn’t fathom what a man like Poe saw in a man like Kylo. She and the rest of the universe would have to continue wondering.

Even Poe hadn’t managed to concoct a good reason and he’d know best of all what he might pretend to see in Kylo.

Kylo doubted very much that they’d need the sort of help she offered and he mentally wished her luck finding anything remotely worthy in him to explain this situation to her satisfaction, but before he could say anything remotely civilized, like _thank you_ or _we know enough about New Aldera City_ or _no, that’s quite alright_ , Poe replied, “I don’t think we’ll be needing their assistance, thank you so much,” which was said with enough graciousness and ease that it smoothed away the most surface level of the woman’s doubts. Who was she to judge them so openly, the wry tilt of her mouth seemed to suggest. If Poe Dameron can’t be trusted, who could be? And didn’t they all make tragic romantic decisions from time to time? “But we appreciate your help all the same.”

She made eye contact with Kylo again, short-lived, but said, “Enjoy your stay, gentlemen. And congratulations.”

Despite the airiness of the lobby, the wide, open space of it, Kylo felt nothing so much as he felt bound and constricted, the expectations of married life twining tight around his body. The expectation that he would enjoy anything ever again felt like a distant impossibility. In all likelihood, their stay would be a disaster.

Pushing lightly at Poe’s shoulder, he smiled blandly at the woman. Next time, he would not so cavalierly gamble Poe’s life, privacy, and personal relationships on a whim.

Poe’s reputation hung in the balance, threatening to tear itself to shreds before Kylo’s eyes. His record, his sacrifices, they’d all be tainted now no matter what, but the less of a poor impression he made, the better. If Kylo played it right, at the very least, one woman might be able to say, _they seemed so in love, there must be something worth loving in him_. “Come on,” he said, hushed, crowding Poe toward the turbolift and catching a whiff of that damnable cologne again, this time mingling with the scent of his shampoo, the standard issued stuff from the base, hazy and undefinable. Over his shoulder, he added, “Thank you, miss,” the words and sentiment both awkward in his mouth.

With held breath, Kylo dared to curve his arm around Poe’s back to settle just under the opposite shoulder blade. It barely counted as a caress, Poe might not even have felt it, but the thrill of that brief contact shot up Kylo’s arm and fell off the cliff of his chest cavity to trap itself in the acid-sharp pool of guilt in his stomach. A part of his mind marveled at it—they hadn’t touched one another since the wedding, it reminded him, and Poe had initiated then—and the rest recoiled as it waited for the backlash.

No backlash came. In fact, Poe hardly seemed to notice it at all as he stabbed his finger on the panel next to the turbolift’s doors and then repeatedly pushed the close door button.

Kylo should have been grateful for that.

As soon as the door shut, he dropped his hand as though scalded. Poe maybe, maybe relaxed ever so slightly, his exhalation of breath just that littlest bit relieved. Not that Kylo could say as much for certain. He sensed nothing from Poe specifically.

They rode up, all the way to the top, for what was promised to be ‘a stupendous view of the city,’ nothing but the quiet hum and regular chime of the turbolift to accompany them. Poe tapped out a rhythm against his flanks, his fingertips dancing over the fabric of his trousers. It seemed to take forever to reach their destination.

Poe’d had to scan the keycard to even be allowed to punch the button for the top floor and as soon as the door opened, Kylo understood why.

Their room wasn’t just on this floor. It _was_ the floor. The entire floor. The top of one of the thin, shining spires they’d seen from the magtrain they’d rode into the city.

And across the long stretch of plush white carpet stood a pair of dove gray chairs, a brushed silver table, a holovid system that would have put the New Republic government’s technology to shame. A huge sheet of transparisteel served as the wall and made the nearby mountain range seem close enough to touch, pristine and crystalline in the starlight, sharp enough to cut. A small, intimate balcony with elegant, curling railings perched itself along the outside of the transparisteel.

“Wow,” Poe said, finally stepping out of the turbolift and into the room. As promised, their luggage was tucked, neat, against the turbolift’s outer wall. Whistling, Poe spun on his heels and performed a wide arc as he headed around the back of the lift. Kylo followed and they stopped short in the sleeping area. “Shit.”

Kylo said, inane even to his own ears, “That’s… a big bed.” Then, he realized, glancing around, that it was obviously the only bed they were going to get, giant suite or no. Striding past, he poked his head into the ’fresher, about the only part of the suite blocked in by walls, and then toward the kitchen unit and nook and finally back toward the front, still dominated by the transparisteel window and the holovid system. No other beds. Not even a couch big enough to stretch out on.

Weariness dragged like a heavy cloak around Kylo’s shoulders. They couldn’t order a cot brought up because nothing said, ‘happy married couple,’ like separate sleeping arrangements. He was tired from the journey and sick at heart and for whatever reason there being only one bed—a perfectly rational assumption, something they both should have prepared for, definitely nothing that should have dismayed either of them—was the point at which Kylo stopped giving a da—

No, that wasn’t true.

But he couldn’t be here right now. He couldn’t carry his own qualms and Poe’s, too, without the urge to lash out rearing up inside of him, ugly and mean. It made his hackles rise, the back of his neck itch. He could twist and shatter and destroy every elegant stick of furniture in this place and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference, but to a small, infectious piece of him, that hardly mattered. The destructiveness of the act itself would have been enough.

He wanted to shake Poe, make him see sense. The bed didn’t matter, because Kylo already knew that Poe didn’t want Kylo anywhere near him. Besides, it wasn’t like it wasn’t large enough to accommodate both of them without trouble. In fact, it could probably hold at least three more people without inconveniencing a single one of them all that much.

This entire suite could be the wide, wild plains of New Alderaan, it could be the void of space itself, and it would still be too close, too confining for Kylo at this very moment, who wanted nothing more than for one thing in this whole damned charade to feel easy. A pointless, childish wish, but his wish all the same.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said in a decisive mumble, perhaps hoping to avoid drawing Poe’s attention at all. Though Kylo did that anyway. Poe’s eyes widened and he looked away, an angry, abashed flush rising in his cheeks. His chest rose and fell more obviously than normal. Kylo’d seen Poe like this before and most of the time, it ended in a fight breaking out or worse.

But he didn’t stop Kylo and that was all that mattered.

* 

All things were possible in the Force, he’d been taught, both good and bad and everything on the spectrum between the two. And yet, Good and Bad still existed, Light and Dark, and never shall the two meet on a battlefield, find common ground, and coexist in peace. The lines, Kylo found, were immutable and entirely arbitrary. This skill was of the Light; down that path lay Darkness.

He’d studied so much of both.

For a few, rare things, both Light and Dark proclaimed it theirs.

Like stealth, like leaving behind as little impression as possible, like skulking in the back of a bar too bright for this late hour and using the tiniest of Force suggestions to keep all passers by from noticing your presence. Nothing targeted, nothing intrusive, just the mental equivalent of a ‘keep out’ sign. A Jedi would have done this just as quickly as a Sith.

And it worked. The world went about its business around him, drinking and dancing and laughing through the minutes until last call, uninterested in the knight-turned-dictator-turned-traitor-turned-whatever who now sat among them. An uneasy ally saved by nepotism and the better angels of his mother’s nature, maybe, yet someone who, regardless, should have drawn the lot of their attention. This disinterest, manufactured though it might have been in this case, was not unusual to him. Few cared what he did until it was politically convenient, at which point he was a coward, an irredeemable monster, a poor, pathetic lost boy, a symbol in arguments for anyone and everyone’s pet causes. 

A drink sweated on the table before him, forgotten since he’d ordered it at the bar, a smokescreen in case a droid rolled past on its way to another table in need of attention. Occasionally he took a sip, ignored that he’d let himself order the whiskey Poe preferred, and grimaced as it grew increasingly watered down, each taste more underwhelming than the last.

A low, languid laugh seemed to fill the semicircle of his booth. “Nice trick,” the voice that laugh belonged to said, equally low and languid, a little smoky, commanding. “Would come in quite handy for me.”

But the woman who slid into the booth hardly seemed to belong to that kind of sound. Commanding, maybe. Okay, definitely commanding. That made sense. But the rigidness with which she carried herself, the silver-streaked blonde of the braids piled on her head, the white, sheened drape of her robes. Kylo almost groaned. The woman was not languid or smoky or laughing now. “Senator Verlaine,” he said, sliding further down the curving bench. Whether in welcome or simply because he wanted distance, he’d never quite know, but it gave her room to sit anyway. He tried not to be angry at her. After her aide’s message, it was difficult. “Long time.”

“I was wondering if I’d find you here.”

“You were looking?” His hand wrapped around his drink, but he didn’t lift it to his mouth. Clearing his throat, he hoped his tone didn’t pitch itself so unexpectedly high this time. He held tight to the anger that threatened to rise in him at her presence here. “Should I be flattered?”

“I didn’t have to look. I knew where you’d be because the reservations came through my office.” She smiled, a little crooked, just like his mother would have done. Something told Kylo she’d gone against a lot of people’s wishes doing that. Something told him she didn’t care. “Well, not the office of the senator, exactly. But people who matter know Senator Verlaine stands with her princess. Congratulations, by the way. Ms. Javos made it sound like a lovely ceremony. I wish I could have been there.”

Kylo’s lips pressed together. Great. So he hadn’t been entirely wrong to think one of his mother’s friends had done this. Arch, he replied, “So you want my gratitude, too.”

“I want you to be smart.” She raised her glass and tipped it in his direction in acknowledgment and dismissal. “I want you not to break your mother's heart. Save your gratitude for the man you married. He must see something most of the rest of us don’t.”

A blaster bolt to the chest might have hurt less than Verlaine’s words. Apparently their ruse had actually been bought by the people it was meant to fool. That knowledge made his skin feel tight and itchy, made his palms sweat. It wasn’t that he hadn’t known before, but now it was real. Really real. People who could make Poe’s life difficult knew; people who could give Kylo what he wanted knew. “You don’t know me. Or Poe.”

“I know you were dealt a hand no other creature in this galaxy can quite comprehend, but you’re the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo even still. I see enough of them in you to hazard a reasonable guess as to your character as it stands now.” Tipping the rest of her drink into her mouth, she slid toward the edge of the booth and lifted her hand to get one of the server droid’s attention. “Either way, I wish you all the happiness you can find in the galaxy.”

A lump tried to lodge itself in the back of his throat. “Why the generosity?”

“Fundraising season gets boring.” The staidness is her expression almost obscured the frivolity of her words. That didn’t sound like the Evaan Verlaine Kylo knew, but it had been years since they’d seen one another and they hadn’t been anything approaching peers at that time. “You’re not going to promote the image you want from deep within a cavernous base built in the middle of nowhere. And I might have seen those petitions you keep pushing at every senator who might have a shred of sympathy for your cause and a lot who don’t. What you’re doing might work for you if you let it.”

No matter the stranglehold he kept on his anger, it bit and snapped in the back of his mind. “So they’re not just getting routed to the nearest trash compactor,” he said, brittle, pausing as a droid arrived with a fresh drink. “I was beginning to wonder. Your aide sure seems to run a lot of interference for you.”

Evaan paused mid-sip. Carefully neutral, she said, “Mr. Zelira is very thorough. If you’ve been in correspondence with him, I’m sure you’re aware of that, but I’ll endeavor to remedy the situation as soon as possible.” Maybe she hadn’t known; maybe Zelira was more thoroughly controlling her schedule than she knew. Kylo was left with the distinct impression that she was surprised. That… heartened him slightly.

“I appreciate the consideration, Senator.” The venom in his tone belied his true meaning, but he had no trouble believing Evaan would read the truth in it for what it was: disappointment.

“Why Drethida anyway?” She asked it like it hardly mattered at all. Luckily for her, it didn’t have to. No, it was only Kylo who felt its effects. At least among people who didn’t live there.

“That’s none of your business.” And before she could berate him for his impolitesse: “How did you know I was here? Specifically?”

She quirked her lips. “I knew what I was looking for.” She bit her lip, a gesture that made her look younger and a little indecisive, so unlike the image she usually projected. “I didn’t know you’d come _here_ , though, if that’s what you mean. Not specifically. It was just luck running into you. I figured you’d be with your husband.”

That sharp, hot stab of pain again.

“Admiral Dameron’s affections have given you some political capital.” She dipped her head and pushed herself to her feet, patting Kylo on the shoulder briefly. “Don’t force yourself to overspend it because you can’t play nice with the people who make all the decisions.”

* 

By the time he returned to the suite, his eyes felt gritty and he was forced to bite back a yawn as he stepped inside. The slightest tinge of purple licked at the scraping arrow points of the countless mountain peaks that stood in the distance. He didn’t need a chronometer to know how long he’d spent nursing that single glass of whiskey. This told him everything he needed to know.

Despite the lateness of the hour, enough ambient light spilled through that one giant wall of transparisteel to safely guide Kylo’s movements around the room.

As though to punctuate the point, he found Poe in bed, asleep. Given how unhappy he’d seemed with the arrangement earlier, Kylo had half expected him to light the entire thing on fire before he dared slip beneath the sheets. Did he believe Kylo wouldn’t come back? That he’d found some other place to stay? Would be complain if Kylo slid into his side of it now? Kylo couldn’t guess, because Poe wasn’t awake to enlighten him and Kylo didn’t dare wake him because whatever else had happened after Kylo left, a good night’s sleep wasn’t one of them.

Somewhere along the way, he’d tortured the bedding, strangling the plush white comforter between his legs, hands fisted tight in the pillow case, folding the pillow nearly in half beneath his cheek. A deep divot engraved itself between his eyebrows while a frown deepened the lines beginning to form around his mouth. He shifted a little as Kylo watched, exposing more of his thigh. Thoughts Kylo shouldn’t have harbored bubbled, unbidden, to the surface of his consciousness, bringing to mind memories he’d locked away.

The black boxer briefs he wore formed an intriguing counterpoint to all the white. 

Or they would have, if Poe didn’t groan in that moment. And not in anything approaching pleasure either. In fact, the closer Kylo looked—and that was the last thing he wanted to do, really, at this point doing the opposite would have been for the best—the more he noticed the tight, tense way Poe held his body, the severe curve of his spine, the minutest bunching and twitching of his muscles as though even in sleep he was prepared for a fight. Or worse.

Before he could do something foolish, like reach for Poe and try to smooth away the tension in his body, he went to clean up in the ’fresher and change into his sleep pants. The scent of the bar clung to him, liquor and smoke caught in the fabric of his tunic, and he almost wished there was somewhere else he could go to pass the hours until morning truly arrived. The bath seemed generous enough…

He didn’t like knowing that nightmares had gotten their hooks into Poe’s dreams and he didn’t like being the one who saw it when that was probably the last thing Poe would have wanted. And yet, he despised the thought of Poe stuck, alone, in his struggles.

Even once Kylo finished his ablutions and returned to the bed, whatever haunted Poe’s subconscious still held him in thrall.

Kylo sighed and pulled back the covers on his side of the bed. Better to get this over with. Better to pretend he’d heard or seen nothing. Better to not wonder how much of that back-breaking tension in Poe’s body was directly due to Kylo’s influence. And better still to not wish he was the one who could ease it when he knew already that he could not.

It was a foolish thought. He’d never been good at comforting people even when he wasn’t what he became. And Poe wasn’t exactly the most gracious of recipients of it under the best of circumstances. Then or now, it wouldn’t have gone over well.

The bed felt so much smaller now that he was in it, still as a corpse, taking up as little room as possible as close to the edge as he could get and he hated it. How he hated it. The distance didn’t help. Poe might as well have plastered himself against Kylo’s side for how present he was in Kylo’s memory, his senses.

Focusing on the quiet sound of his own breathing, he very carefully offered Poe as much privacy as he could allow him in such a vulnerable position. But it didn’t matter. Each sound intruded; every movement felt like an earth-shattering jolt. His heart hammered against his sternum and his blood flooded his ears in a chaotic rush as crashing as any beachfront storm.

Fuck, this was a bad idea. Poe’d had the right of that.

And then Poe flipped over—Kylo had forgotten this, how _much_ the bastard moved in his sleep, and that was even at the best of times, too, in beds far, far smaller—throwing his arm well across the center, the line of fair demarcation in Kylo’s mind, the no-man’s land between which neither would cross.

He wasn’t making noise anymore, thank the Force, and his breathing had evened out some, but at the end of that arm was a hand with fingers that skimmed Kylo’s bare bicep and that just—this wasn’t going to work. Poe could have torn his skin to shreds and it would have hurt less.

“Ben,” Poe muttered, still in the full throes of slumber, “please.”

Kylo sucked in a hitching, shivering breath and screwed his eyes shut. His skin pulsed in time with his heartbeat where Poe touched him.

Squirming, he slipped out of Poe’s reach, the easiest and hardest thing he’d ever done.

Before he turned fully away, he couldn’t help brushing his knuckles across Poe’s hand, nudging it back toward Poe’s side, erase the evidence of Poe’s indiscretion—or what Poe would probably consider as such. In this small way, Kylo could protect Poe from himself and from Kylo, too, and he wouldn’t ever have to know.

After that, he began to learn the patterns of shadows that fell across the ceiling, each tiny imperfection standing proudly against the light. It was easier to count the pools of darkness than close his eyes. Hands laced over his stomach, he did not sleep.

He made sure to rise as soon as golden sunlight crept across the floor, brazenly gilding the carpet with the reminder that another day had come, because for as long as Kylo had known him, Poe’d always woken with the dawn, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes unhappily, but with certainty all the same.

It was one small mercy, nothing at all that could stand against the many cruelties Kylo had inflicted upon Poe and everything he’d once loved about him.

He’d learned to be incapable of mercy, perhaps a lack of it was what had gotten them into this mess; and it still didn’t come easily to him, but for Poe he wanted to try.


	3. Chapter 3

He hadn’t used a caf distiller in years, not during his time training with Luke and not afterward, when everything he ate and drank was pretty well standard First Order fare prepared by droids or junior officers who’d make a mockery of their uniform but hadn’t done anything to truly earn any punishment. Standing before one now, he couldn’t say he was intimidated exactly, but he certainly wasn’t confident either as he smoothed his fingertip across the row of buttons along the bottom.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t make it spit out a cup of caf.

It was that he wasn’t sure he could make it spit out the right kind.

“What are you doing?” Poe’s words were spoken in a mushy, morning muddled way, through a hand he held over his mouth to stifle a yawn. His eyes narrowed, bleary, and his hair was mussed, curls falling every which way around his face. He hadn’t, Kylo couldn’t fail to notice, put on a shirt. 

So Kylo noticed things about him he ought not to have. The years had been good to him, leaving behind toned curves and arching muscles. He hadn’t been this physically fit when they were younger, that was for sure.

Blinking and looking away, Kylo focused entirely on the distiller, because it was safer and if he looked like an idiot bent before it, then Poe might not question him too closely about anything else. Like what he did last night. And why he couldn’t look Poe in the eye right now.

“Nothing,” he replied, gruff, not quite irritated, but vulnerably close to it. Hitting the button he thought was the correct one, he huffed and crossed his arms, straightening up and defiantly staring at the floor. Where Poe’s bare feet stood, maybe a meter away at the most, half hidden by the hem of a pair of loose-fitting workout pants.

Thank every deity in the universe he’d put at least that much on.

Maybe the wall would be a safer place to stare at. Definitely safer.

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Poe pointed out. If Kylo didn’t take a few steps back, Poe would’ve ended up body checking him as he stepped toward the distiller and investigated it for himself.

“It’s morning,” Kylo said. “There’s caf and a caf distiller. What would you do in that situation?”

Poe pointed at a small basket next to the distiller. It was filled with packets of tea, sugar, hot chocolate. “I’d take some of that instant caf and just…” He mimed pouring the contents of what Kylo presumed were imaginary granules of instant caf into his mouth.

Kylo’s nose wrinkled. “That’s not how I remember you being,” he said, offhand, unthinking. It was easy to slip into memories sometimes, easier than Kylo cared to admit, and easy today given exhaustion and proximity. He could smell the indifferent hotel shampoo in Poe’s sleep-mussed hair.

Surely that was why he’d slipped.

Once upon a time, Poe demanded perfection in his caf, a tiny rebellion against a father who willingly drank ‘the worst shit this galaxy can cultivate,’ at least according to Poe Dameron, who at twenty-two somehow knew better. Life was too short for flash frozen grounds, he’d say, and then proceed to drink it anyway, sulking, until he found himself at one of Hosnian Prime’s more accomplished establishments, throwing his stipend at baristas until he saw sense and bought his own distiller for the cramped apartment Kylo sometimes got to crash at when his mother didn’t insist he stay with her. At that point, he’d forced Kylo to learn how to run it. Though if Kylo was being honest, it was more that Kylo had wanted to know. For Poe’s sake.

And now, for no reason, it seemed. Because though Poe peered with curious intensity at the distiller, he didn’t seem to take any joy in its existence. Not even as the scent of good caf filled the air, the dark liquid dripping into the plain white mug beneath the spout in a familiar, pattering sputter.

This failure was easy to contemplate compared to the much bigger taboo he’d just broken.

They didn’t bring up the past; the less they acknowledged it, in fact, the better.

“Things change,” Poe answered, clipped. “People change. It’s hard to keep a taste for good shit going when there’s a war on.”

Poe swiped the mug free from the distiller as soon as it stopped hissing, the caf finally fully brewed, a minor miracle. His hands cupped the thick porcelain as he brought it close, the steam wafting toward the ceiling before him. He looked down at it dubiously, tapping the rim with his index finger. He didn’t seem quite so pissed off now that he had it in his hands.

Despite his misgivings, he took a sip and hummed, brief and strangled and pleased even for its brevity, as he swallowed. Kylo ripped open a pair of sugar packets and offered them to him, unsure why he wanted to add fuel to this particular fire and doing it anyway. That Poe was full of shit seemed obvious; that he wouldn’t want to be called on it was equally, painfully obvious as well. He well knew that things and people changed, but Poe hadn’t changed so much that Kylo thought he was wrong about this one tiny thing.

He couldn’t be. It felt important that he wasn’t. But he didn’t know how to bend the universe to his will, break and twist and pull it into a configuration that made sense to him. Even when he’d tried so desperately to do just that, he’d been unable to do so. The galaxy had just fallen apart in his hands the last time he held sway over it.

Nothing in him now, before, or ever, could make Poe do what he wanted Poe to do.

And yet.

“Why—?” And for whatever reason, maybe because the caf was decent or because it was morning and there was caf to be had at all or because Kylo was just lucky today of all days, Poe relaxed, cutting off his own peevish question. Sighing, he took the packets between two fingers and upended them into the mug. “Thank you.” Reluctant, if sincere, he added, “It’s perfect.”

An ache bubbled and swelled beneath his breastbone, threatened to crack his ribcage as it grew. The kitchen felt suddenly too small, too close. “I’m glad,” he said, tight, as he pushed past Poe, careful to avoid touching him. “Excuse me.”

“You’re not going to have any?” Poe asked, halting Kylo in his progress as surely as if he’d placed himself bodily in Kylo’s path. “Hey, are you okay?”

Kylo turned back, hating the power Poe’s voice had over him. It was like a compulsion. Kylo couldn’t not listen when Poe spoke to him. “What?”

“Are you okay? You look—” Poe circled his hand in front of his face, as though that could encompass the entirety of how Kylo ‘looked.’ “You didn’t come back last night.”

“I did,” Kylo answered, short, though feigning an ease he didn’t feel. “I’m fine.”

Poe’s lips compressed in a thin, unhappy line. His gaze lowered again to the caf. It wouldn’t have the answers he probably wanted, it was just a mug of caf, no more, but that didn’t stop him from trying. “I know this isn’t easy,” he said eventually. He lowered his voice and bit his lip. “I thought it would be once the decision was made. It’s always been easy before.”

Kylo wondered what he meant by that, but he realized before he asked that he didn’t really want to know what other decisions Poe’d agonized over that were easier than this. If he wanted any answer at all, though, now was the time. Poe hadn’t opened himself this much to Kylo in years and if Kylo didn’t do something soon, he’d clam right back up.

Kylo had no idea what to ask.

And then Poe cleared his throat and the option was taken from him. “Anyway,” Poe said, airy with self-consciousness while lifting the mug in acknowledgment. “Thanks again. I didn’t think you’d remember. Or care.”

There was nothing that could be said that wouldn’t tumble the balance of this moment into a tailspin they’d never recover from. So precarious that it became precious for the near impossibility of its existence, Kylo could only nod and swallow around the lump of words lodged in his throat. Of course, he remembered. Of course he… 

But Poe was holding at bay whatever demons clung to him through this mess.

Kylo could do no less.

* 

The comm unit blinked and beeped from its alcove nestled in the corner of the room. Kylo hadn’t even realized there was one until this moment and, perplexed, strode toward it. Poe was in the ’fresher taking a real water shower, using every ounce of hot water than could be wrung from it based on how long he’d been in there. It was what Kylo would have done if he’d thought to do it first.

He peered down at the unit, suspicious of it. Nobody really should have known they were here. And anyone who did would have contacted their personal comm numbers.

Before he could acknowledge the call, it quietened and went dark. Waiting another moment, a message flashed. Text only. _Correspondence for you at the front desk. Please feel free to pick it up at your convenience or indicate that it may be sent up to you._

Kylo’s brow arched. He considered ignoring the request, but his curiosity won out. He keyed in his assent. Maybe ten minutes later, the turbolift dinged and a small, squat droid rolled in, a thick envelope held on a tray secured to the top of the droid’s square-shaped head. It bleeped, courteous, and approached Kylo.

No less confused, Kylo plucked up the envelope. Smooth beneath his fingertips, he turned it over. No writing on the front. Only a pale, glimmering circle of wax on the back, New Alderaan’s curling, elegant seal in soft relief.

“Thank you,” Kylo said absently as the droid retreated, quiet and discreet, mind already on the contents of the envelope. His finger slipped beneath the flap and popped the seal free. Inside was folded a card of the same stock. Written upon it was an invitation in the same glittering, pearlescent pale shade as the wax. An invitation to a fundraiser. One of Evaan’s fundraisers from the looks of it and nothing Kylo would have wanted to attend even under the best of circumstances. Politics had never been where his interests lay, no matter what his mother did to show him how vital and intriguing it could be. And they didn’t interest him now despite how forcefully he’d been pushed into it by circumstances.

She worked quick, Evaan did. Maybe even planned it this way, given their encounter last night and the words of wisdom she’d left him with. He probably owed her, too, considering the implicit promise she’d made to him regarding Drethida. Then again, wouldn’t his presence only serve to hinder her future campaigns should anyone take issue with him? His presence wouldn’t be an uncontroversial one. But if they wanted to prove something to the galaxy about their connection, this would be an ideal time and place. And safer than some other times and places he could think of. Evaan wouldn’t try to make them fall on their faces before the court of public opinion, he trusted that much. Anyone else would salivate for that chance.

Perhaps…

Perhaps this was a test from her. To see if he was willing to put it all on the line for what he wanted.

He was still staring at the thing when Poe emerged from the ’fresher. “Hey,” he called, plodding, still barefoot, always barefoot, around the suite until he found Kylo. “What are you doing?”

Kylo lifted his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t. Guilt lurched in his stomach, though he had no reason to feel it. It wasn’t like Poe had caught him doing something untoward.

Hair damp, shirt damp, even pants damp, Poe scrubbed at the back of his head with a towel. A few droplets of water ran down his throat, soaking into the loose neck of the shirt and darkening the fabric. His hair curled over his forehead, weighed down by water. Somehow, he managed to avoid dripping on the carpet.

Handing over the card, he waited for Poe’s response.

“Did you bring anything formal?” Poe asked after a long time spent studying the writing. Chewing his lip, he sucked on the inside of his mouth, biting, too, at his cheek. It was a thoughtful look, a considering one, far less mortified or angry than Kylo expected. One minute, he didn’t want to share a bed with Kylo, the next, he was willing to play lovebirds in public with him at the drop of a hat.

“I didn’t see the point.”

Poe nodded, unconcerned. “I’ve got my uniform. The concierge could probably have something delivered for you.” His eyes widened as he looked at Kylo again, seeing something on Kylo’s face that Kylo maybe didn’t want him seeing. “What?”

“I just—” Kylo’s face warmed, his skin no doubt reddening with his embarrassment. “You brought your uniform?”

That wasn’t the question he wanted to ask exactly, but it felt like the safer option under the circumstance.

“There is a part of me that does consider planning ahead a virtue.” But though his words were dry, there was a hint of defensiveness about them.

“I thought we were keeping a low profile?”

“As much as I’d love to hide in a hole somewhere until this was all over…” He shrugged and handed the card back to Kylo. “If we get this over with now, we’ll at least be able to say we completed our objective. General Organa didn’t send us here just for us to stay up here the entire time. Much as I might prefer it that way. If you’re willing, I’m willing.”

“I…” For a moment, the words wouldn’t come. In fact, it was an awful idea for a whole lot of reasons, but he couldn’t think of any real objections to it. They were here for a purpose, it was true. And staying in this suite the entire time only advanced their cause so far. And if Poe was advocating for it, then maybe it was okay. “…don’t think this is a good idea.”

Poe snorted. “How’s that different from any of our ideas?”

“It’s not,” Kylo admitted, “I just wanted it on the record.”

Poe’s quiet, “Duly noted,” was so droll, so uncharacteristically warm, that Kylo could nearly believe everything was going to be alright between them, that whatever equanimity Poe had found between this morning and now was more than a truce, more than a cease fire that would someday break, a momentary allyship that would fragment the moment it was no longer needed.

If Kylo knew how to hold those pieces together, he thought he might give up anything to do it.

As it was, he supposed he should enjoy it while he could.

He didn’t anticipate there would be anything left to enjoy once this was over.

“It’s short notice,” Kylo said, offering Poe and himself one last out. In fact, the invitation was for tonight and already the sun was high in the sky, the morning hours burned away in favor of a slow descent toward evening. “I saw Senator Verlaine last night. She’s the reason—” He nodded his head at the corners of the suite. “—I think she’s trying to help.” He swallowed. “With Drethida.”

But Poe apparently wasn’t interested in an out and he didn’t seem much interested in the finer details of his encounter with Evaan. Politics wasn’t his favorite subject either. Flapping his hand dismissively, he turned and began walking away. “I meant what I said earlier,” he called over his shoulder. “And… I know Drethida means something to you. If this can help someone out there, it’ll be worth it.”

A strange buoyancy bobbed in the center of Kylo’s chest. For once, he didn’t let himself overthink it. “You’re just saying that because I made you caf.”

“It was good caf,” Poe answered, immediate, like he’d expected that response from Kylo and had prepared in advance for it.

Kylo wasn’t sure he liked that. It was an intimacy he could get too reacclimated to, but he wasn’t sure he didn’t either. And that fact scared him less than it should have.

* 

When Poe stepped out of the ’fresher and Kylo was left with plenty of new reasons to believe the universe only existed to test him. Turning his head, he fought back a flush Poe would be sure to see otherwise. “What?” Poe asked, glancing down at himself. He plucked free a stray bit of what Kylo assumed was lint from his jacket and then furrowed his brow in confusion. Obviously, the effect he had on others meant nothing to him—or he couldn’t see it for what it was when it stared him in the face.

Good news for Kylo, at least.

His throat clicked as he swallowed. “I thought you brought your uniform.”

“Uh. Yeah. This is my uniform.”

“That’s not what you wore to our—” He nearly tripped over the word. “—wedding.”

“Yeah.” Poe’s gaze slipped sidelong, unwilling to catch Kylo’s own. Not quite an eye roll, but not quite not one either. “It was. Part of it anyway. Most of it.”

And now that Kylo looked closer, he realized the jacket and trousers did match the ones he’d worn before. Same colors, same cut. Only now, a riot of medals decorated his chest, mostly silver to match the piping on the jacket, shot through with the occasional flash of color, a mosaic of Poe’s many acts of valor, heroism, and survival that Kylo didn’t know how to read. A silver-gray rope crossed his chest and held a half cape in place over his left shoulder, what Kylo supposed was the most impressive part of it.

It should have been ridiculous. And maybe it was a little bit. Poe wore even his service uniform with a hint of disdain and insouciance, preferring his flight suit to anything else the military had ever seen fit to garb him in. But age or experience or pure stubbornness on Poe’s part made it work. He managed to look dashing instead of pompous, regal rather than vulgarly overdressed.

“I thought long and hard about getting myself demoted when I saw this thing in its full, awful glory.” His fingers fussed at the hem of his jacket and he winced as a pair of medals clicked together. His lips twitched in a sneer. “Laugh it up, huh.”

Kylo swallowed again, drew in a deep breath. “I’m not laughing.”

“Sure you aren’t,” Poe replied, lofty, his cheeks pink with indignance. “At least you get to—” He flipped his hand through the air at Kylo and then threw the cape over his shoulder with a huff. “—in something _normal_.”

Nothing about Kylo felt normal at this point, but he decided against arguing as much. He wanted to blame the exhaustion he felt, the bone-deep weariness, the dry, itchy grit in his eyes, for the painful throb of sympathy he felt. It was a uniform, not a death sentence, but Kylo knew what that kind of weight felt like, the legacies of the past writ out in hood and helmet and robe. Perhaps it was something similar for Poe. “You don’t have to wear that, you know.”

Poe rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be much of a Republic war hero if I didn’t remind everyone of that fact as loudly as possible.”

Loud wasn’t the word Kylo would have used to describe the full regalia he wore, but he didn’t dare say that. Dignified, perhaps. Anachronistic, maybe, if he wanted to find a complaint to voice. Poe _did_ look like a Republic war hero, one from the old days, when the Republic was at the height of its glory. An artist could have painted a portrait of him and hung it in a museum and it wouldn’t have looked even the slightest bit out of place. Kylo imagined that was the point of it. Sure, the dry self-awareness that sat in the curl of Poe’s mouth somewhat marred the romanticism of the figure he cut, but nobody would believe him a fool for adopting the mantle of the Admiralty in its entirety this way. And he would not hurt for attention tonight despite the fact that he wouldn’t be the only one vying for it. He probably wouldn’t even be the only Republic officer in attendance vying for it. In fact, knowing Poe, he wouldn’t vye for it at all. 

But he’d get it anyway.

“You’ll feel better when you see what everyone else is wearing.”

“Based on you? I’m not so sure,” Poe answered, cryptic. Then he shook his head and gestured sharply toward the turbolift. “Look, can we just go? Do our part and… I don’t know. Drink a lot while we avoid everyone as publicly as possible?”

“You want to avoid everyone? With me?” Though he said it with a mocking air, something warm expanded within him, something he desperately wanted to crush and cherish in turn. It wouldn’t have been unlike the way they used to slip out onto balconies when they grew tired of the events Leia sometimes asked Kylo to attend, events which Kylo in turn invited Poe to attend.

“Better the devil you know, don’t you think? You can’t tell me you don’t plan to avoid everyone as much as possible within the confines of acceptable behavior.”

“Some things don’t change.” _Besides,_ he thought, _it’s probably for the best, isn’t it?_

“I guess that’s true enough.” Wryness twisted Poe’s mouth into a more amused smile than the expression that had graced his features before. It was an admission of a sort and one that felt like a greater victory than Kylo could have hoped for.

Later, he would be sure he didn’t like it, that small degree of intimacy he felt, because he suddenly had a Poe Dameron at his side who wasn’t glaring daggers at his side or sniping snidely at him or generally using his every breath and movement to remind Kylo that he was only tolerated at best. And it was so much harder to deal with that than he would have expected. This fiction was a weakness he wanted to grant himself and the circumstances gave him so many reasons to give in and say yes. They wanted to sell this, right? Really sell it? How else would he do it if he didn’t make it look real? He could so easily make it look real.

And with Poe looking at him this way, treating him as though they were in this thing together… it felt real.

Too real.

* 

Kylo didn’t often give himself over to feelings of awe or inspiration. It just wasn’t who he was. Not even before. Not even when he’d discovered the Force for the first time, knowing through intuition and hunger that he could do things that nobody else could, nobody except Uncle Luke, who rarely visited anyway. Even that small and that inexperienced, he hadn’t known it as anything other than his birthright. The Force was the most important thing he knew, but it didn’t take his breath away. But staring at the large hall around him, he thought this was what that should have felt like, at least a little bit.

It wasn’t even that this hall was that particularly stunning or noteworthy. As far as such things went, it was beautiful, if ordinary.

But he’d seen more sublime things in his life, terrifying and sublime, that had affected him less.

Perhaps it was how very like home it felt to a part of him that perhaps wasn’t even consciously aware of it. The elegant, minimalist lines of the building itself, broken up by every sort of fanciful decoration—a twining, twisted sculpture here, an unyielding stretch of painted canvas there, even a perfectly accomplished sonata performed by a pair of musicians in one corner of the room—managed at once to celebrate art and life and love in all its forms without any hint of discord between the disparate parts.

Heart longing for that kind of unity, Kylo nearly turned away, backed out of this mess in its entirety before it got to be too much. He wasn’t of Alderaan; he didn’t belong here. It was his mother’s blood that granted him entrance, but he would only ever be an interloper. This, as with so many things in the galaxy, could not be his. He’d ignored it when he might have shared it in with his mother, turned away from it when he’d been a disinterested boy. And now it was too late.

Perhaps Leia may even have enjoyed imparting her knowledge of her home to him. He’d never thought to ask, never particularly cared.

He’d never valued the things he should have while he still had the chance.

Beside him, Poe whistled, low. It was as good a distraction as any and Kylo clung to it with a ferocity that might have scared him in the past, but it was nothing compared to how savagely tight he held to things before he’d shunned the Dark. Back then, it had required no effort to squeeze the life out of something. Looking at Poe, trying to ignore how very appealing he was, he asked, “Are you surprised?”

It wasn’t a condemnation; mere curiosity drove the question, a need to focus on something other than his own thoughts.

Poe scratched at the back of his head. “Lotta people here is all.” He gestured expansively. “I knew Senator Verlaine was popular, but…”

But it felt like the entire planet had shown up for this thing. Yeah, Kylo was trying to ignore that fact, too.

It did, at the very least, do wonders to mask their presence. Kylo Ren’s name was the most notorious in the galaxy, but most people didn’t expect him to show up at a fundraiser being held on behalf of Evaan Verlaine, no matter that she and his mother were so very close and it was entirely possible, if not plausible, that Kylo would be close to her, too. It wouldn’t solve their problem the whole night, but maybe they’d get the chance to acclimate themselves to their situation here before the truth bore out.

A cam droid hovered in Kylo’s peripheral vision and he tilted his head down to avoid its attention. Poe followed suit, though sadly enough, his uniform would have been more than enough to draw the thing’s gaze if it was looking for potentially interesting people to snap holos of. He almost suggested that Poe turn away, too. Just in case. From this distance, he couldn’t read the press tag that flickered and blinked in yellow around its midsection, but that hardly mattered. He didn’t want anyone’s—

A small, startled gasp from a passing guest shattered the illusion that they would go unnoticed. She was older, wore her hair in a white rope down her back, and was elegantly dressed in shades of blue and gray. When Kylo looked at her, she returned his scrutiny with a squinting, unhappy glare. Her attention flicked to Poe for a moment and somehow she grew even more displeased by what she saw there. She whispered something to her companion, a taller, younger woman who seemed more interested in reaching the back of the hall than in what was going on in her immediate vicinity. But even she, once the woman tugged on her sleeve and got her to look at the pair of them, managed a displeased, unhappily surprised grimace.

Great.

“This is going well already,” Poe said, smiling around gritted teeth. He lifted his hand in a brief wave of acknowledgment, perhaps not the nicest thing he’d ever done, but effective in getting the both of them to move along. “I’ve always wanted to be a pariah.”

Kylo rolled his eyes. Sure, he hated that Poe’s name was getting smeared right alongside his. And he did feel bad about it, but he could only manage morbid amusement when Poe could, in turn, only sound so drily prissy about it.

“Do you think we should try to find Senator Verlaine?” Poe asked after another moment spent standing around awkwardly as people moved around them. No one else seemed keen to notice them and Poe grabbing his arm and pulling him toward a wall—good idea, why didn’t Kylo think of that—only assisted in keeping them from becoming the center of attention. No doubt that woman would tell everyone she saw; soon enough, they wouldn’t have any privacy or they’d have all the privacy in the world as everyone did their best to avoid them. Kylo wasn’t ready to set down odds just yet.

He squinted and tilted his head, scanning the crowd. “No,” he decided. He got the feeling that she would find them if she was interested. “Just because she invited us doesn’t mean she wants to see me.”

“Uh huh,” Poe said, slow, dubious. “Somehow I doubt Evaan Verlaine cares so much about her image that she wouldn’t want to see you. Why offer an invitation at all if that’s the case?”

“A misguided sense of loyalty toward my mother? A soft spot in her heart for lost causes or political ruin? Take your pick.”

“Not everything is about your mother. Or lost causes.” Kylo looked at Poe askance and arched an eyebrow. To which, Poe scoffed and added, “Political ruin may well still be on the table if we play our cards wrong.” Another set of eyes finally noticed them, these ones appalled and considering, like the person just couldn’t figure out what Poe Dameron saw in a guy like Kylo Ren. Kylo was going to get tired of that question very, very quickly. “This is possibly a bad idea.”

They’d be waiting a long, long time for the answer.

“You’re one to talk. Aren’t you only here out of loyalty to my mother? Besides, you’re the one who agreed to it,” Kylo reminded him. “I told you.”

“This might come as a surprise to you, but I don’t always think things through.” He paused and gestured at the space between them. “Obviously.”

Poe always spoke fast, but the way his words ran together just the littlest bit made Kylo realize that he maybe wasn’t just arguing for the sake of it or to blow off a bit of frustrated steam. The offhand barb didn’t even manage to get its hooks into Kylo; he was too busy trying to come up with a way to distract Poe from whatever misguided instinct was rattling around in that stupid, stubborn head of his. At best, Poe might end up getting into an argument with New Alderaan’s most powerful politicos and most well-heeled glitterati.

At best.

So Kylo did something equally stupid and probably at least as stubborn and most definitely driven at least in part by sleep deprivation.

He grabbed Poe’s hand and laced their fingers together and tipped his chin up. Narrowing his eyes, he offered their latest onlooker a tight smile. Though he was fairly sure he managed to look calm, his heart slammed against his ribcage, fast and true, threatening to punch a hole through his chest. Poe’s hand was soft and warm and a little sweaty and he couldn’t help gripping a little too hard, grinding the bones of their fingers together.

“Just—trust me,” Kylo said with enough determination to make it seem like, as long as Poe did just that, it would all be fine. Kylo knew what he was doing. Even though he didn’t, not even a little bit.

Poe’s muscles twitched within his grasp. It was obvious that he wanted to pull away, but he finally stilled, accepting his fate. “This is ridiculous,” Poe said, all but sputtering, maybe not so accepting

“You think I don’t know that?” Kylo asked, incredulous, but just as he was about to continue, a quartet of musicians took to the stage that stood in the back, though Kylo couldn’t see it from here, too many people between them and it.

“I don’t think throwing this in people’s faces is the right approach,” Poe said, entirely reasonable and therefore entirely out of character. Whatever well of sanity he’d drawn that response up from would certainly have been useful long, long before now. “We’re supposed to be adults about it.”

“Next time I won’t glare then,” Kylo answered. “But we should probably—”

It was as though everyone else had gotten a message that had been overlooked when it came to Kylo and Poe, because as soon as the musicians played out their first harmonious note, most of the assembled individuals shuffled and organized themselves into pairs across the gleaming marble floor. The upside was there was now more room to maneuver. The downside was it seemed like every other person in the place had decided dancing was the best possible thing they could be doing.

If Kylo and Poe didn’t want to stand out, this certainly wasn’t the place for them right now. And if the curious, borderline malicious glances were anything to go by, they were standing out.

Too much so.

And suddenly, that seemed like the best possible idea, not standing out. Without really thinking about it, Kylo pressed Poe back against the nearby wall and scanned the crowd. And then he saw Evaan further down, a worried look on her face, begging off from whatever conversation she was having, in order to stride toward them, her mouth setting itself in a deep frown. Another individual tried to get her attention, but she waved them off with a distracted smile.

Something in the Force rippled and snapped.

It didn’t take a genius to realize Evaan wasn’t the one who invited them.

The medals Poe wore dug into Kylo’s palm as he held Poe in place. “What’s going—?”

“Shh,” Kylo answered, more sharp than he intended. It had been years since the Force spoke to him with anything approaching clarity and even now, danger and fear and driven, dire purpose permeating Kylo’s senses, he couldn’t quite isolate what he was sensing. He’d learned to distrust his instincts long ago. It wasn’t easy to believe what he felt now. He said, quiet, “I think we should go.”

Poe, always so brash and brave and fool-minded without a lick of self-preservation in him, nodded. Did he sense anything amiss, too? People didn’t always need the Force to know when something was wrong and Poe’s intuition was better than a lot of people’s. And somewhere beneath that headful of curls, he did harbor a modicum of sense, his own instincts honed by years spent fighting. “Yeah, okay. Wasn’t my kind of party anyway.”

Restraining the urge to roll his eyes, Kylo shook his head at Evaan, mouthed his discouragement at her. _Don’t come over here_ or _we’re leaving_ or, simply, _stop, no_. There was no need for it. And until he knew what was going on, he didn’t want to risk her, too. How well that would go over. Senator Verlaine, injured or worse, caught up in some lingering intrigue from the war. All because Kylo Ren had seen fit to show his face at one of her events.

“All right,” Kylo said, serious, low, for Poe’s ears only. He hoped it only looked like the kind of intimacy a newly wed couple might share, the need to touch and hold and stand irresponsibly close to one another regardless of situation or demands of decorum. Better gossip about that than a new line in the Holonet news feeds about Kylo Ren’s penchant for paranoia. Either way, he didn’t even hope to keep a shred of his dignity. No matter how this went, that ship sailed long ago. Journalists would have their opinions of him one way or another. “Smile a little.”

Poe’s eyes widened, irises dark-flecked and expressive and not at all what Kylo wanted to be thinking about at this moment. They were a distraction he didn’t need or want. And this close, they were deadly, unfathomable, the kind of weakness that would bring Kylo to his knees.

He wished suddenly, irresponsibly, for his lightsaber. He wouldn’t need subterfuge if he could prove himself a threat to whatever was out there.

“What?” Poe asked.

Kylo gritted his teeth, wished he could simply say, ‘fuck it,’ and herd Poe toward the door, appearances be damned. But something told him not to. _Something_ told him to wait. “Smile.” And he did so, too, in illustration. “Don’t look suspicious.”

“Because you look so natural?” Poe scoffed, but he did as Kylo asked. And he did Kylo one better, pulling him in by the folds of his robes. His mouth was so close to Kylo’s ear that someone might have mistaken it for a kiss or a nip. The lack of distance meant that Poe couldn’t see just what Kylo gave away in his face. If the way he had to close his eyes, will himself to still, slow his breathing for fear of shuddering, promised anything, it promised he was giving away everything.

This proximity enervated Kylo in damning, inconvenient ways. He wanted—there was so much he wanted. To take Poe’s face in his hands. To apologize with words and deeds and new, pleasant memories that could never dilute the old.

Another thing he’d never been very good at: keeping a bland, clean sabacc smile in place.

But more than anything, more than Poe’s willing touch, his closeness, his attention, he wanted to get Poe out of here safely.

“What do you see?” Kylo was unwilling to turn to look himself, not because he was afraid—though he was, a little, for Poe—but because, well, he knew what it was like to need a shield, didn’t he? And Kylo knew how to be that at the very least.

“A lot of scandalized faces,” Poe answered. With a sigh, “I don’t see anything unusual.” He shook his head and barked out a bitter, choked laugh of disgust. His hair brushed, soft, against Kylo’s cheek. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Kylo screwed his eyes shut even more tightly, tried to focus on more than the scent of Poe’s damned cologne. The bottle it came in was going to end up broken if Kylo had any say in the matter.

The Force responded to him only reluctantly now, knowing itself for the spurned power it was and knowing how desperately Kylo wanted it. That moment of clarity from earlier was gone and the more Kylo reached for it, the further it retreated. The peril remained murky, malformed, frustratingly out of reach. _Where are you_ , he thought. _What are you?_

Poe’s hands clenched tighter to him, another distraction Kylo didn’t need, but one he didn’t know how to deny himself. He drew in a deep breath and just as he was about to say something, Kylo’s senses sharpened. _Fucking finally_ , he thought, frenzied.

A shape materialized within his mind, a shape and a face and a body and a very, very illegal knife made of inert composite materials that wouldn’t be caught on scans. Something specifically created to get through security. Something sharp and serious and so very deadly in the hands of…

 _Let me take something from you,_ he felt, malicious intent stabbing outward in the Force, a practice run for the real deal. _Something that is precious._

There. Just there. And now that Kylo knew what he was looking for, it was easy to see the fury that wrapped itself around the throat of a man, just a man, nobody Kylo knew, nor Poe, nor anyone for whom he might reserve his righteous, grief-stricken rage. Kylo didn’t know this man, but by every god in the galaxy, this man knew Kylo, blamed Kylo.

Force.

A cry rose in the crowd, then stricken exhalations as the man pushed forward, right for Kylo—and Poe, specifically, precious and obviously so, even to a man who hated Kylo enough to throw everything away. Right until—

He was stopped. A meter or two from Kylo—from Poe, Kylo’s mind unhelpfully pointed out, from Poe, from Poe, from Poe—he was stopped. Close enough that, when Kylo turned, he could have reached out himself and slapped the man across the face or worse. With the Force, finally striking true as lightning, he held the man still, in his thrall. With the Force, he tore the knife from the man’s grip.

It clattered and spun across the floor.

In his mind, he saw that knife find its intended target. Poe’s blood spurted hot across Kylo’s hands as he tried to staunch the blood. Poe’s voice cracked on a pained, incomplete sound when Kylo pressed too hard. Kylo saw it all. He saw the man’s joy, his sense of accomplishment, his vindication, and he saw the man’s death as Kylo proved himself every bit the villain he was still cast to be. All this he saw.

And all this he knew to be false. Every inch of him screamed for retribution and every inch of him held back—for Poe, because of Poe.

The man tried to writhe, but all he could do was spit in Kylo’s face and throw his head back and forth in protest—and even that only because Kylo allowed it. The trampling sound of boots approaching quieted as Kylo held back the people they belonged to, a wall thrown up against them and every onlooker who stood by, jostling one another for a better view, a better show. This was the most fascinating thing they’d see in years. Everyone would clamor for details. Oh, how they would talk.

Security would be useless here, less than useless. No point letting them through.

“Who are you?” Kylo asked.

“Fuck you.”

He wiped his hand across the bridge of his nose, down his cheek. “You really want that to be your platform? ‘Fuck you?’”

The man’s neck bulged, the muscles bunching as his skin grew redder and redder. He’d exhaust himself trying to get out of Kylo’s grasp, go limp from the strain if this went on long enough. Kylo could pluck the answer from the man’s mind if he wanted to, though it was reasonably obvious as it was.

“You’re a monster,” the man said, the last in a long line of people who’ve laid that accusation at his feet.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Kylo said, unable to help himself, his brain-to-mouth filter thoroughly incapable of holding itself up to this task. Even under better circumstances, it might have failed. He’d heard that same refrain so many times—and from people he considered this man’s betters—that it had none of the effect he was perhaps hoping for. Yes, Kylo was a monster. No, that fact couldn’t hurt him, not like this.

He was older than Kylo had originally thought he was, and less crazed with grief. That fact, ironically, made him more terrifying rather than less. He could do nothing at this moment to harm Poe, but what if Kylo’s control slipped? His pain was old, a much hated companion, and something in Kylo made it all the worse. He had nothing left to lose. He would take advantage of any weakness Kylo showed.

“Your grandparents would have deserved better than a collaborating traitor like you for a grandson. Your mother should be ashamed of you. Instead she lets you parade yourself around, happy, even though you killed billions of people. Fuck you.” Though he spoke low, he had to know the cam droids would be able to pick up the sound and amplify it across the entire galaxy so long as there was profit in it. And there would be so much profit in it. Frenzied tears sparkled in his eyes. That, too, would find its way into the feeds to be lapped up by the masses. “You truly are Vader’s heir.”

Kylo’s voice shook despite his best effort. “I never authorized the use of—” He couldn’t even get the name out and didn’t dare try. This weakness he did not want exploited by pundits and politicians and common citizens alike. “That wasn’t me. I was cleared of that charge. It _wasn’t me_.”

The man laughed, bitter and broken. He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to say it. They were all, Kylo included, thinking it.

_You believe a tribunal absolves you?_

The man tipped his chin up in defiance, waiting for a blow he expected to come. His certainty of the outcome shone in the Force and he reveled in it; he believed in this small way, he would win. Vader’s heir wouldn’t hesitate. He knew it with the same certainty that he knew Kylo had pulled the trigger on the Hosnian system. He hadn’t truly expected to succeed in his primary goal, but if he could make the rest of the galaxy _see_ , it would be worth it. Surely all it would take was a little push. This was that little push. His eyes found Poe’s and there was a fire as hateful in them for him as he had had for Kylo. “What kind of person must you be, Admiral? To love a man like this?”

Fuck, Kylo was so, so tired.

So he dropped the man to the floor and beckoned forward the various security officers arrayed around them all. They converged on the man, pulled him to his feet and slapped a pair of binders on him. All the while, he stared at Kylo, now blank-faced and cold, accusatory. Kylo could only manage to hold his gaze for a moment or two before he had to turn away from it. That was all he’d won today, Kylo’s shame.

That was nothing.

“Are you all right?” one of the officers asked, dubious. It was clear that she, too, cared little for Kylo, but she did her job, assessing him for signs of trauma she would not find. “I don’t know why he wasn’t caught at the door. We’re all very—” No doubt, her livelihood was flashing before her eyes. Even disgraced, the son of Leia Organa could kick up a fuss if he so pleased. It did not please him, but she didn’t know that. “Our apologies.”

He waved her off. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, but of the things she needed to know, she didn’t need to know that. “Thank you.”

The woman nodded once and turned sharply on her heels and got back to work, helping clear the way for the removal of his assailant. Her voice rang out above the din of the crowd, calling for order and calm, telling everyone that the threat had been neutralized and to please leave Ben Solo and Admiral Dameron alone as they recover from this ordeal.

“Ben!” Evaan yelled, slipping between a pair of officers and an enforcer droid of Republic make, the Republic seal visible on its shoulder joint. “Admiral Dameron.” Her eyes widened as she caught sight of the man responsible and she stepped toward him, torn between sticking with them and following him. “Orin?” Shocked, upset, she swung her attention back to Kylo. Presumably it was easier than contending with your personal aide’s… whatever this was. “You’re both okay?”

“Yes,” Kylo said, feeling very weary and very foolish. Orin Zelira. He wanted to laugh. No wonder the man had stonewalled him so thoroughly. All this time, he’d wanted to do worse. “I’m sorry for the—”

She waved him off and pinched the bridge of her nose. “He handles event planning for me,” she said, sounding stunned and unsure and despairing, three things Kylo didn’t think was possible. “He must have sent out the invitation to you. I can’t believe this happened. He never said… Someone could’ve gotten hurt.” Her lips thinned and her hands landed on her waist. And there she was, the Evaan Verlaine Kylo knew. But he didn’t want to speak with her at the moment, not her or anyone really. All he wanted was to get out of here.

“Make sure Poe has an escort back to the hotel,” he said, tone the same as the one he used to use with his more recalcitrant officers. It was a tone that brooked no argument, the one he’d learned got him the least amount of backtalk. It wasn’t his most generous of tones.

Evaan nodded and glanced at Poe. Would that Kylo could do the same, but he couldn’t even manage that much, not while Poe remained uncharacteristically quiet while he hung back and away from Kylo, which suited Kylo just fine and suited him even better when he started moving toward the exit and Poe didn’t immediately follow.

In fact, he didn’t follow at all.

Mostly everyone ignored him, though a few individuals shouted out questions or comments as he passed.

Under the clear, dark sky full of still unfamiliar stars, it was like nothing at all had happened. It was cool and quiet, untouched by the evening’s dramas. As he trudged back toward the hotel, he hoped he’d be able to forget about Orin and what he said anytime soon.

He didn’t think he would, but he supposed there was always a chance.

* 

Kylo’s feet dangled over the edge of the balcony, his arms crossed around one of the supports that held up the railing while his temple leaned against one of the bars that jutted upright at a perpendicular angle. If he only looked to the deep black sky, he could pretend this was any place in the galaxy instead of New Alderaan specifically. It was almost comforting, that sense of anonymity, the universality of nighttime’s ability to obscure and cast shadows over the worst the worlds it touched had to offer.

There were, it reminded him, corners of the galaxy still untouched by his worst treacheries. This obviously was not one of those places, but if he reminded himself enough of it, perhaps the weight of his responsibility wouldn’t smother him quite as much as it did, wouldn’t press and press until he felt like he couldn’t fill his lungs with even one more breath.

One day, sooner rather than later, he hoped, the Republic would have wrung every bit of information out of him they could possibly want. And on that day, he wasn’t sure what he would do, but he hoped it involved retreating somewhere far, far away from everything and everyone. It was maybe a childish dream, a selfish one, but he couldn’t imagine anything better than retreat, isolation. A planet like Ahch-To might be nice. Maybe Luke had had the right idea when it came to repenting of one’s mistakes. He didn’t think his mother would allow any of the punishments he truly deserved to fall upon him. She still loved him too much for that. But this, he would allow himself, this dream of being nowhere and no one.

There was a faint ding as the turbolift arrived at the suite, which meant Poe’s return, which meant… who knew what it meant. Kylo certainly didn’t. Maybe it meant nothing. He certainly didn’t bother getting up to greet Poe or otherwise alert Poe to his whereabouts. If Kylo was lucky, he’d miss entirely the bulk of him sitting on the balcony.

But Kylo was not lucky and after a few seconds, there came a tap at the transparisteel and then a head poked through the part of it that opened onto the balcony. Poe’d lost the cape somewhere along the way, probably tossed it onto the floor of the suite if Kylo knew him well enough, and he’d unhooked the jacket, leaving his throat and clavicles exposed. There were dark circles beneath his eyes—Kylo hadn’t noticed them before—that Kylo wanted to smooth away with his thumb.

“I would offer you a shoulder to cry on,” Poe said, “but we both know how well talking works out for us.”

Kylo snorted and resumed staring out at the distant peaks, gray and sparkling and peacefully untroubled by the world around it.

Poe grabbed hold of the railing and slid into place next to Kylo, close enough that Kylo could feel his body heat from shoulder to hip. He wanted to lean into that warmth, but he did the opposite, shifting slightly. He didn’t have the strength to push himself further down the balcony than that though. Weakness, again.

“What are you going to do once this is over?” he asked instead.

“Once what is over?” Poe asked. Out of the corner of his eyes, Kylo caught the glimmer of Poe’s ring beneath the moonlight. “I thought it was over. Isn’t that the point of a war ending? Shit’s over. This is what comes after.”

“You can’t have imagined this would be the outcome.” He gestured at Poe’s ring and back at the suite and then at himself.

“No,” Poe admitted with something like acceptance in his voice, so different from how he’d behaved at first, even earlier today. Nothing had changed, really, but for right now, right at this moment, it seemed like it had. “I imagined worse.”

Kylo swallowed; he knew Poe didn’t mean it to be quite as complimentary as it sounded, but Kylo couldn’t deny the stridently truthful note in Poe’s voice and how he felt in response to it. Orin’s words echoed in his mind, filled his ears with recriminations, earned and unearned, but Poe cut through that, just a little bit, just enough that he could bear the immediate burden of his accusations.

“What could be worse than this?” he asked, half joking. Every moment of this whole experience had been one form of hell or another for Kylo; he couldn’t imagine it was any easier for Poe, who’d almost been hurt, who’d had a decision he’d barely had any part of thrown back in his face. How could anybody love a person like Kylo? That was what people would think about Poe now.

Poe quirked a smile at Kylo, small and mysterious, hiding everything that Poe didn’t want to admit, whatever admissions there were to be had. “I can think of a few things,” he said after a brief, entirely silent pause.

It wasn’t any sort of real answer, but it served its purpose well enough as long as Poe’s purpose was to make Orin’s words feel bearable.

“Ben?” His hand pressed against Kylo’s forearm, squeezing lightly. “You take responsibility for your actions. You don’t have to take responsibility for this, too.” He spoke with certainty and his touch lingered, feeling as much like a brand as anything else, a life preserver that Kylo desperately wanted to cling to. “It’s not yours.”

But it wouldn’t be fair to Poe to treat him like an anchor.

Stretching his arms, he succeeded in dislodging Poe’s hand without, he hoped, making it seem like he was shunning Poe’s touch entirely. It shouldn’t have been important—it wasn’t like Poe would care if Kylo did shun his touch—but it was. To Kylo. He lied enough to himself that he couldn’t bring himself to lie about this, too.

“I’m sorry,” Kylo said, “for dragging you into this. I don’t think I said that before.” An apology wasn’t enough, barely scratched the surface of what needed to be said, but it was a start. Perhaps one day, Poe would forgive him. “I should have.”

Though Kylo wanted to protest the action, ask Poe to stay instead, Poe pushed himself to his feet. “We’ll be smart about this,” he said, a little incongruous and far too optimistic. “We’ll make sure it’s worth it and then we can go back to whatever constitutes normal. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Kylo’s heart lurched in his chest, wrung tight by Poe’s unexpected kind casualness. The flippancy with which he treated this whole endeavor made it easier to bear somehow. It was easy to forget sometimes that Poe was a compassionate man beneath the sarcasm and the strain the war had put on him. But even so, Kylo wanted to believe, for even one moment, that what they were doing was real and normal and fine. Poe was just trying to make him feel better, but somehow his words only made him feel more guilty.

He wished it was as easy for him to remember the line between reality and fantasy as it was for Poe. It might have made things easier.

“You should get some sleep,” Poe added, holding his hand out, a safety line if only Kylo would take it. Poe’s eyes scanned the horizon, perhaps searching for answers, but even with the distance in Poe’s gaze, Kylo didn’t take the olive branch he offered. Poe’s touch wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. “They’ve beefed up security here a bit, so there’s nothing really to worry about.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Kylo said, and that was true enough. He sensed no greater conspiracy than one man’s vendetta. What the future held, he couldn’t say, but for right now, they were safe enough. Kylo would have staked his life on it. He was willing to stake Poe’s, too, that was how certain he was.

“Then I’ll be relieved enough for the both of us,” Poe said, a bit testy, perhaps forgetting that he’d caused a lot of people to worry in their lifetimes. “I guess we should’ve thought this possibility through, huh?”

“Guess we got too used to me being tolerated on the base.” He huffed, darkly amused and then not amused at all as he recalled Orin’s intentions. “He wanted you dead, too, you know.”

“Yeah, buddy.” Chafing his arms across his biceps, he grinned, vicious, eager to meet the possibility head on. It was pure bluster, or enough so at least that Kylo didn’t feel the need to point out that Evaan would handle Orin for them. “I figured that out pretty quickly what with the knife and the death glare and the ‘you’re just as bad as he is, Poe Dameron, how dare you’ spiel.”

“You’re okay with that?” _I’m not. Not with any of it._

Poe rolled his shoulder and cracked his neck, posturing at its finest. “Lots of people want me dead. I’m still here.”

 _For how long,_ Kylo thought, a pathetic question he knew better than to ask. Instead, he focused on the part of the horizon he thought Poe might be looking at, the best form of connection he could allow himself to reach for at this moment.

Snapping his fingers, Poe added, “Come on. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“I’m okay.” He twisted around to better look at Poe, to assure him everything really was fine. “I’ll come in soon.”

“Uh huh,” Poe replied, crouching and then landing on his ass, legs splaying out before him as he pushed himself back against the transparisteel. His ankles crossed, feet swaying back and forth because Poe was constitutionally incapable of remaining still. “Hope you don’t mind company then.”

At least, Kylo allowed himself to think, he kept his distance, his stubborn, seated sentinel, and allowed Kylo to keep some semblance of privacy until his eyelids finally grew tired enough to fall and the lure of sleep managed to dull the remembrance of Orin’s knife, his hatred, his absolute moral certainty that killing Poe would make things as right as they could be in a galaxy where Alderaan no longer existed. Even the tone of his words lost some of their potency to Kylo’s sensitive hearing. And that was a miracle all its own. Kylo hadn’t thought he’d ever forget the sound of Orin’s voice in his ears.

Though he recalled standing and tapping Poe on the shoulder to rouse him, he didn’t remember losing his shoes and robes or falling into bed or falling asleep.

* 

But he must have done those things, because he woke with his cheek mashed in his—no, not his—pillow. Poe’s pillow. Definitely Poe’s pillow. And half his body was draped across Poe’s chest, his arm thrown across Poe’s waist, his chin hooked over Poe’s shoulder. It felt so good, the solid warmth of Poe beneath him, the flat, pliant stretch of skin and muscle and sinew across Poe’s midsection. For a moment, Kylo thought himself back on Yavin 4 in the summer, their bodies sticky with the heavy press of humidity against them as the sun burned away the cool pockets of rainwater that dotted the land after a storm the previous day.

Poe’s mouth was parted slightly, each exhalation even and calm, so different from the night prior as to be staggering. Kylo’s arm, of its own accord, slipped up Poe’s chest, brushed over his neck, lingering for a moment where his pulse was deep and strong, bounding beneath Kylo’s thumb before it crested the curve of Poe’s chin and scraped lightly against the underside of Poe’s lip. He was back on Hosnian Prime, just like every stolen night in the drafty, ancient apartment complex where all the older cadets seemed to live, keeping warm against the chill by touch and motion alone because Poe was too stubborn to turn the heater on when blankets and Ben would do.

It was easy enough to forget and so he did, kissing Poe as he cradled his cheek, kissing him until he tensed beneath Kylo’s hand, tensed and relaxed and tensed again, and responded by wrapping his hand around Kylo’s, shifting them both slightly until Poe had enough leverage to roll them, and deepen the kiss on his own terms, eyes closed maybe a little too determinedly, like if he pretended hard enough, they could very well be their younger selves, carefree and—

He stilled, hand curling around Poe’s shoulder, preparing to push him away, the very last thing he wanted to do.

His head swam and his stomach lurched and he realized that nowhere along the way had he seen fit to put on sleep pants or a shirt or anything that would make this moment less intimate. His body remembered this too well, slotted right back into place, so comfortable that even though Kylo’s heart hammered in protest, in fear, the rest of him still didn’t want to move. Knowing the consequences, he still hesitated. His palm itched to pull Poe closer, his fingers longing to tighten against Poe’s rib cage or in his hair or around his neck instead of doing the sensible thing, the only realistic thing he could do, the only right thing to get them out of this mess he’d stupidly fumbled them into.

Fuck. _Fuck_.

And then he did that right thing, shoved hard at Poe, scrambled as best he could toward his side of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said, quick, breathless. “I didn’t sleep well.” Stupid, stupid thing to say. What did sleep have to do with any of this? His body still throbbed and clamored to reach for Poe, but he knew better than to follow that impulse any further; he’d already followed it too far. And even if Poe was offering what he might have been offering—but no, he couldn’t possibly, he was just overtired, too—it wasn’t what Kylo wanted. None of this was what he wanted. Not like this.

Poe bit his already bite-red lips and nodded. His gaze, clear and open and focused elsewhere, gave nothing away. All he did was pull the sheets a little higher up his body. “It was a weird night,” he agreed, devoid of everything save a calm ease that said nothing at all was wrong here, everything was normal. He flopped back onto the bed and hiked his knee up, hands curling around the pillow beneath his head, and stared up at the ceiling. “We’re okay?”

Kylo climbed out of bed, grateful that Poe didn’t look at him as he gathered his robes from the floor. “Yeah. Yeah, if you are.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine,” Poe answered, bright and congenial. He even smiled, crooked and wry with self-deprecation, visible to Kylo as he wandered toward the ’fresher. “Don’t you worry about that.”

And though Kylo couldn’t quite believe that, he did try, and that had to count for something.


	4. Chapter 4

“I can let him know, ma’am,” Poe said, voice low, bent over the comm unit. He stiffened as Kylo approached and turned slightly to look at Kylo from his peripheral vision. His eyebrow arched, but he otherwise seemed entirely unaffected by Kylo’s earlier indiscretion. “But you can talk to him now if you’d like. He’s out of the ’fresher.”

“No.” It was Senator Verlaine’s voice. “That’s okay. I trust you to relay the message. I hope you’re both well. I never would have wanted… well. I’m sorry this happened.”

Perplexed, Kylo waited outside of the holoprojector’s range, arms crossed. The image flickered and disappeared. Straightening, Poe turned around and mirrored Kylo’s stance. His mouth twisted down at the corners a little, serious and sober. “Senator Verlaine was hoping we might stop by her offices today. She mentioned you had a few propositions regarding the handling of Drethida that she was interested in speaking with you about.”

Brushing at his tunic, he focused on the floor.

“I didn’t realize it was quite so dire,” Poe continued.

“It’s—” The words caught in his throat. There was no explaining Drethida, no excusing it. All he could do was try to make things right for those people before it was too late. “There are a lot of worlds where things are dire. That’s the problem.” _And I can’t do anything for any of them_.

Poe took a few steps toward Kylo. “Senator Verlaine mentioned some sort of crystal substance was spread throughout the atmosphere about ten years ago. It binds to oxygen and—”

“I know what it does.” Kylo bit his tongue to keep from saying more, sharp enough that he tasted iron in the back of his throat. He didn’t need Poe to lecture him about what Snoke did.

But Poe wasn’t cowed. In fact, he stood straighter and he only grew more sedate as each moment clicked over into the next. “They’ll all suffocate. The Republic projections show they have another five years before—”

“I don’t trust the Republic’s projections. I know what Supreme Leader Snoke was capable of.” And here he was again, explaining it to yet another person who didn’t see the point, figured what harm would it do to let those people suffer a little longer. He knew his motives to be impure, but in this one thing he couldn’t back down. He turned away, because he couldn’t look at another person who didn’t see what the problem was, who could do the rough calculus necessary to reach the conclusion that this could wait. “The Drethida don’t do well when the atmospheric mix falls below…” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “What does telling you matter anyway? You’ve never been there. You don’t know a damned thing about it.”

This time, when Poe stepped forward, Kylo took a few steps back. And when Poe tried to grab his arm, he snatched it away.

“It’s important. Why didn’t you make it a stipulation during the formal declaration of surrender?” He asked the question as gently as he knew how, but it still struck Kylo with ruthless hooks, caught in his skin and pulled.

Kylo laughed, bitter, ignoring the way his flesh threatened to rend with Poe’s disbelief, with his oh, so simple suggestion. Like it was as easy as all that. “You think I didn’t?”

Poe sighed. “That’s not what—”

Kylo cut him off with a vicious slice of his hand through the air and turned away. “It’s fine. You’re not the first person to question me about it. I’ll just… go speak with Senator Verlaine and get it over with. This is further than I’ve ever gotten before with it.” He began to stride away, already mentally rehearsing what he would say to her, how he would convince her. “I should be happy.”

He was not.

“Wait.” Poe jogged to catch up with him and this time, his hand managed to wrap around Kylo’s wrist and hold hard to it. Even if Kylo wanted him to let go, he would have had to hurt him to break his grip. Understanding brightened his eyes and made Kylo want to turn away from him “You thought getting married would help, didn’t you? Your mother wants to protect you, but you just want people to see past… That’s why you didn’t back down?”

“I thought you didn’t care,” Kylo answered, “about what I was working on.”

“I—” Poe’s disgust caught, hacking, in his throat. “Damn it, Ben,” He spat the frustrated words at Kylo’s feet. His eyes were pleading, searching for a foothold, something that would let him move forward. “I’m trying. I’m _trying_ to understand. Help me understand. Don’t just throw the past in my face. You wanted this marriage to mean something. Tell me what it is. I’ll care. I promise you that much.”

There were so many things he could say to that, things that would have made Poe back off, would have shut him out forever and for good. It would have been the easy thing to do, the right thing, maybe.

But for once, he didn’t have it in him to obscure the truth. Poe was so, so very close to knowing exactly what it was Kylo wanted without him even saying anything and why he wanted it and exhaustion lapped at his determination to keep this one thing to himself.

It was easy to let go when Poe was all but begging him for an answer, when he mostly knew the truth.

There was nothing that Kylo could say now that would make himself look worse.

“What happened to the Drethida was my fault. The Supreme Leader never would have done this if I’d done what he’d sent me there to do. People still would have died, but it wouldn’t have been like this. I was weak. And foolish. I’d like to undo as much of it as possible before—I don’t know. Before I can’t do anything about it at all.”

Poe said nothing for a moment, performing some mental calculations that Kylo was sure would reveal too much. “That would’ve been… right after you fell?” Poe never, ever spoke of that time and hearing him reference now felt like a slap in the face, but instead of any of the reprisals he’d come to expect from anyone making mention of his turn, Poe seemed almost neutral about it. In fact, determination settled on Poe’s face and he frowned deeply, his gaze troubled, but not, for once, because of Kylo or so it seemed to him. “Let me go with you.” When Kylo opened his mouth to reply, Poe squeezed his wrist harder and added, “Please.”

Kylo groaned lightly in irritation, but he didn’t say no. He couldn’t, not with Poe looking at him so fiercely, like maybe he truly, finally believed Kylo, believed _in_ Kylo. If he genuinely wanted to help, at least with regard to this, Kylo didn’t want to say no. No matter the consequences, if there was a chance of salvaging anything from this situation, it was worth it. “Fine.”

A hovercar met them out front, a handful of security still following them through the lobby and onto the street. One of the security officers rode along with them, a silent presence at their side, so nondescript that Kylo immediately forgot them the moment he stepped out of the car and onto the street outside Evaan’s office. Poe stepped out alongside him and with practiced ease, slipped his hand into Kylo’s.

A quick jerk of Poe’s head indicated the cam droid rocking back and forth, buoy-like, in the air over their head.

Of course.

A cam droid.

And yet that didn’t stop a thrill of excitement from rolling up Kylo’s back and settling in the part of his mind that took the most damning pleasure in pretending this was real. If he let it, it would clamor for more, rattle the cages of Kylo’s thoughts and tempt him with this desired, forbidden thing.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it. Squashing it only seemed to give it greater power over him once it reemerged. It was the only way to explain the ki—

He should not have been thinking of the kiss.

An aide, not Orin Zelira, greeted them as soon as they stepped inside the building. “Senator Verlaine is expecting you. Due to everything that’s happened, she cleared her schedule for the day,” she said with chipper good cheer. Young and exuberant, she made Kylo feel old just looking at her; she was maybe the finest actor they’d come across so far. If she hated Kylo and disdained Poe, she hid it well. “In fact, she’s surprised it took you this long to arrive, Mr. Solo. Admiral Dameron, it’s an honor.” She paused, found her decorum, and quickly changed gears. “I’m sorry about what happened to you both. Mr. Zelira… we had no idea. He had some family on Hosnian Prime, of course, but…”

Kylo braced himself for the burning stab of pain that always accompanied mentions of Starkiller and its legacy. It still, after all this time, took his breath away. Few people in the galaxy who hadn’t been touched personally in one way or another by that atrocity. By rights, that should have made it easier, if only because the sheer magnitude of his exposure to it should have dulled its effects.

Would that that were so.

Poe’s grip tightened around Kylo’s shaking hand and his thumb stroked across the back of his knuckles. If asked, Kylo couldn’t have lied and said he wasn’t grateful for that.

Poe didn’t ask. And Kylo was grateful for that, too.

“Yeah, it’s, uh. It’s good to meet you,” Poe answered in quick bemusement, exchanging a puzzled, apologetic glance with Kylo, who knew no better how to handle someone like her than Poe apparently. “What’s your name?”

“Pazza Thra, sir.” She gestured, sharp and clean, toward the back of the building. “This way.”

If Kylo could say nothing else about her, he could admit she was a refreshing change of pace from every other person Kylo had met since the end of the war. If someone like her, from a place like New Alderaan, could see past Kylo’s deeds, maybe he actually did stand a chance of seeing Drethida get the help it needed.

She smiled at both of them as she turned and stopped in front of a door. She pressed her hand against the panel next to it, the thing granting entry with a pleasant, trilling beep. “Here we are.”

Poe, gesturing expansively, followed Kylo in.

Evaan rose from her desk and offered them a relieved look, offering refreshments when Kylo wanted nothing more than to get on with this. When he said as much, she merely cocked an eyebrow and said, “As you wish,” resuming her seat as they took theirs. “How are you holding up?”

Kylo wished people would stop asking him that. “Fine.”

“And you, Admiral?”

Clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth, he said, “I’m in the wrong line of work if a death threat or two bothered me, ma’am.”

Evaan’s lip twitched and she glanced down at her desk. A handful of datapads were scattered across the surface, all powered down for the moment. It made her office seem like a harried place, a strong counterpoint to the poise with which she carried herself. That, more than anything else, spoke volumes as to the kind of day she’d been having. It was, he imagined, a good thing there wasn’t a comm terminal in here. It would probably have been ringing nonstop. “That’s good to hear.” She picked up one of the pads and flicked it on. “Orin will be… he will be tried to the full extent of the law. He’s already confessed, but if you’d like to pursue this—”

“Do what you have to,” Kylo said, purposefully dismissive. His concern wasn’t Orin. And a disturbingly large portion of Kylo’s thoughts bent toward leaving the man alone. If not for the risk he posed to Poe, Kylo would have told her he didn’t care in the slightest how they handled him. He couldn’t exactly blame him for wanting Kylo dead, could he? Orin Zelira wasn’t the first; he was just the most honest.

“Very well,” Evaan said. “In that case, I wanted you to know I’ve spoken with several colleagues in the Senate regarding the situation on Drethida. It’ll take some time, but we think we can convince the budget committee to entertain discussion of having it pushed into the latest round of relief bills. I can’t guarantee anything—”

Kylo snorted and Evaan offered a rueful look in reply.

“— _I can’t guarantee anything_ , but it’s a step. And more of one than has been taken previously as we both know, so don’t look at me like that. I’ve had a lot of practice in my day at ignoring Organa stubbornness. If you have anyone who might be able to testify to your—”

“I will,” Poe said, leaning forward. His hands wrapped tight around the armrests of his chair and relaxed again. “I mean, if it would help.”

Evaan’s mouth curled in a calculating smirk and a spark of knowing glinted in her eye. She picked up another pad and handed it over. “Whatever else Orin did, he got people on your side.” Her mouth twitched again. “ _Some_ people. More than before, at least. Alderaanians like to believe they’re above their baser emotions.”

She gestured for him to turn on the pad.

KYLO REN SAVES LOVER FROM CRAZED ATTACKER.

Scoffing, Kylo tossed the pad back at Evaan’s desk, uncaring if it came to harm in the landing. “Tabloids. Just the kind of support I want. That wasn’t even—” His hand brushed across his mouth, but it was impossible to scrub the bad taste from his tongue, his lips. Bile churned inside of him. “He wasn’t _crazed_.”

“I know.” Evaan said it with sad understanding. “But that’s not what it looked like.”

“And there are more like this?” Kylo’s attention briefly turned to Poe, who’d stretched to grab the abandoned pad and was now scrolling through what Kylo presumed were a panoply of headlines of varying degrees of lasciviousness and daring falsehood.

‘Lover,’ Force.

If only they knew how very wrong they were.

“Some aren’t so complimentary.” Evaan folded her hands on the center of her desk. “But the general idea is the same. Mostly. A few have chosen to champion Orin’s narrative—”

“—Genocidal ex-dictator protects single human life—” Poe tossed in, dry, flipping the pad so Kylo could see it and the unflattering holosnap attached to it, a screen captured from some testimony or other he’d given that managed to make him look like the crazed one, mouth twisted cruelly in the midst of answering another stupid question from one hearing committee or another probably. Shrugging, Poe flicked through a few more, wry amusement morphing to exasperation to indignation with each swipe of his finger.

“The important thing is people are seeing you as something other than the mad enforcer of the First Order or a traitor to Alderaan and everything it stands for.” It sounded like so little when it was said aloud that way, a minor obstacle that was easily overcome by spin and the judicious application of political capital.

There was no possible way any of this could make as much of a difference as she seemed to think it would.

But Kylo wanted to hope. More than that, he had to. There was no other choice.

“But yes. I think it’ll help,” Evaan said, finally answering Poe’s question though her attention remained firmly on Kylo’s face. “I believe I can do this for you. And more than that, I want to. For your mother. And for you. For what you want to accomplish for Drethida.”

His mother. He hadn’t spoken to her since…

She stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “If you wouldn’t mind sticking around, Admiral, we could get this done now.”

Poe glanced at Kylo and shrugged. “Sure. Now’s as good a time as any.”

“Excellent.” Now, Evaan smiled slightly. “And might I suggest dinner for the two of you at Silai’s after this? I’m given to understand you wouldn’t regret it.” The, _and it would look good in the press_ , went unspoken, but heard regardless.

Kylo nodded. If Evaan was willing to do this for him, he’d gladly pull his weight even if he didn’t like it. Dinner was frivolous, so much less than what he should have been doing. His job was here and yet, Evaan was doing it for him. Poe, too. “Silai’s it is,” he said, impressed with how few of his grievances leaked into the tone of his voice.

“And maybe comm your mother,” Evaan suggested. “Before she finds herself even more furious at you for not comming her first.”

* 

The sky darkened to a purplish-pink and night traffic began twinkling in the organized skylanes over the city as Kylo watched from the balcony and traced the progress of various shuttles and transports through the air. He kept his mind blank, refused to poke and prod at the tangle that existed at the center of his thoughts. He knew better than to try. They’d been a mess for almost as long as he’d been alive. They would probably be a mess a good deal longer than that, too. Even Luke’s teachings had only gotten him so far in that regard.

The suite was so quiet, so empty, that the ding of the turbolift startled Kylo from his aimless reveries. They dissipated like so much mist in the sunlight and if he’d been thinking of anything at all, it was lost to the Force.

Kylo turned in time to see Poe slip between the opening turbolift door, so impatient that his shoulder nearly collided with the thing. His features were closed off, distant and troubled.

When he noticed Kylo staring, he looked away. But he strode toward the balcony anyway, inhaling deeply enough that Kylo could tell even from across the room that he was girding himself for something.

When he poked his head out, however, the rest of him braced against the wall, he merely said, “Think you can eat?”

Not with the knot lodged in his throat, he thought, annoyed with himself that this was all it took for Kylo to remember what a fool he was. It struck Kylo then, with all the elegance of a sledgehammer, that he hadn’t seen Poe in hours now. And that even that little time spent apart only made his return more painful. If he wanted to, he could still dredge up the memory of Poe’s weight against him, the heat of his body, the press of each of his fingertips against every bit of Kylo’s skin that he’d allowed himself to touch.

No, he couldn’t eat. The very thought of it nauseated him. And yet Kylo could see the barely contained energy simmering just beneath the surface of Poe’s bland, indifferent exterior. If Poe didn’t do something, bad things would happen instead.

And Kylo had agreed to dinner.

It used to be Poe’d go for begrudging jogs or pick fights with Kylo when he got this way, stupid arguments that ended with one or both of them nursing equally stupid grudges well past their expiration dates. When pressed, they’d called them ‘inside jokes.’ But really, they’d just liked pissing one another off in consequenceless ways. It was safe. Fun for them.

Every couple needed a hobby.

Couldn’t do that now, of course, not with so many genuine sources of conflict between them. Anything they said might get taken too far, might touch on things neither of them wanted to ever touch on again, but the memory hurt less than Kylo expected, and the look of consternation from Poe when he smiled slightly was worth it even for the way it reminded him of how different things were now.

“What?” Poe asked, immediately suspicious.

Kylo shook his head. “I could eat,” he conceded, though he wasn’t hungry in the slightest. The thought of doing so in public only added to his disinclination. But if Poe was ready to get this over with, Kylo wouldn’t be the one to drag his heels on it. “Do you think…?”

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to ask exactly, but Poe seemed to get it anyway, heard what Kylo couldn’t quite figure out how to say. “Yeah,” he said. “It’ll be fine.” The hunched way he carried himself belied something—the fact that something wasn’t fine, maybe—but Kylo didn’t have it in him to argue or push. Not yet anyway.

If he was anything like Kylo, it was probably just nerves. Still. “How did—”

“Yeah,” Poe said, breezy, “that was fine, too.” After a moment, he took pity on Kylo. “If the Senate denies Senator Verlaine’s proposal, it won’t be because you didn’t do your damnedest to see it through. The least I could do was show up and do my part.” A little flat, he added, “I wish you’d said something.”

An ache, deep and painful, expanded through Kylo’s chest, welled up and threatened to spill over in ways Kylo wasn’t prepared to handle. He swallowed back ill-advised words and nodded, managing little except an insignificant, “Thank you.”

Distracted again, Poe didn’t seem to notice anything amiss and for that, Kylo was grateful, too.

* 

Silai’s, like most restaurants in the trendiest parts of any city on any world in the galaxy, prided itself on its excellent service, its unique, coveted dishes, the clientele it served. The last, within reason presumably, since the maître d’ hardly spared Kylo a second glance as they stepped inside, though he waved them forward with a hurried gesture of his hand. “We were told to expect you,” he said, bland. “Your table is ready.” Then, his eyes narrowed at the space over Kylo’s shoulder and he pointed at—Kylo turned to look—a cam droid that seemed to have sprouted up out of the ether. He said to it, somewhere between bored and afflicted, “You know the rules.”

The cam droid beeped, but backed up, crossing the open threshold of the door back onto the street.

And that, Kylo imagined, was the real reason why anyone chose Silai’s over the competition. Glancing at Poe, Kylo saw something like relief settle around his shoulders, a comforting arm where Kylo’s couldn’t ever be such a comfort.

“This way,” the man said, hardly noticing what had transpired, presumably due to how common an occurrence it was. Whatever else he hardly noticed, he couldn’t fail to see the mingled curiosity and disdain that permeated the dining room as he led them toward the back. Either way, he remained professionally disinterested in doing anything other than his job.

Whether as a courtesy, a bid to avoid too much attention, or because Evaan willed it to be so, the maître d’ offered them the most private booth in the place that wasn’t already occupied by even more high profile individuals. It wouldn’t stop the truly intrusive sorts from seeing them, but they certainly wouldn’t be on display the way at least one couple was—brazenly affectionate under the auspices of a pane of transparisteel, several cam droids attending to them from the opposite side of it.

A nasty pang of vindictive, violent need wrapped Kylo in a stranglehold, caught him so thoroughly in its thrall that the maître d’ raised his voice to get his attention. “Your host will be along shortly, sir. If there's anything you need now, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

The way he spoke, it was perfectly clear that he wanted neither of them to request a single thing from him, now or ever. Poe’s mouth twisted slightly, like he was contemplating seriously inconveniencing the man’s life simply because he could, but chose to refrain at the last possible second, sinking back in his seat and relaxing into one of the more forced smiles Kylo had ever witnessed him giving.

Poe’s attention drifted to the same couple Kylo had noticed a moment ago. His smile fell away. “Think they’re holovid stars?”

“I wouldn’t care even if I knew the answer,” Kylo replied. “I don’t think I’ve watched a single holovid all the way through in my life.”

Poe grinned then, incongruously pleased, and there was nothing fake about that. Kylo flushed as he realized just what he’d said and what Poe’s smile implied. About the only person he’d ever willingly watched one for was Poe. And they both knew why they’d never caught the end of one.

Fuck, Kylo really needed to stop opening his mouth.

Before Kylo could ask Poe just what in the hells he was doing smiling like that, he leaned forward and quickly flicked his gaze toward the handful of patrons whose attention burned in the back of Kylo’s mind, morbid at best, wanting to see how a monster took his meals, what he looked like when he was enjoying himself.

_Let’s make it good,_ Poe mouthed, while Kylo heard the answering thought in his mind, a cool, clear, _fuck this_ , accompanying it, _let’s make it real good_.

Force, how Kylo wanted to cling to that pointless bravado. It sat in the middle of the table, an anchor thrown into the sea just for him, ready to pull him back to center.

“We could try changing that,” Poe said, entirely unnecessary because it wasn’t like anyone could hear the low, intimate sound of his voice. The way he leaned on the word ‘try’ was practically obscene.

It took Kylo entirely too long to recall that they were talking about holovids.

When Poe reached for his hands, it was all Kylo could do to keep from pulling back, scalded by the touch. Kylo shook his head minutely and lifted his shoulders, questioning. “Yeah, sure,” he said, casual, because couples, even newlyweds, even people like them, who didn’t do casual anything and not with each other, could be casual. “Did everything go okay today?” And what he really meant was _why are you doing this now?_

“Sure,” Poe said. “Yeah, it was great. I found out—”

Their host, a Twi’lek woman dressed in a flat black suit, approached, a rictus-tight blue-lipped smile on her mouth. “Good evening,” she said, the way of waitstaff the galaxy over. Kylo barely paid attention to what he ordered and waited impatiently while Poe made his own selection. The sooner they got this over with, the better.

“Is there any chance you’ve got some Mon Cala pickled seabells stashed away somewhere in the back?” Poe asked, dialing up a charm offensive that melted a very, very small portion of the woman’s chilliness. It was impressive in a way and Poe’s eyebrows twitched slightly as he realized it wouldn’t work nearly as well as he hoped it would. But it did work. At least a little bit. For every Pazza Thra, there were probably hundreds more who were exactly like this woman.

Then Kylo realized what Poe’d asked for and grimaced. “Don’t answer that,” he said out of long-forgotten habit. Like muscle memory, the words fell from his mouth without conscious thought. There wasn’t a food in the galaxy more disgusting than those seabells. Kylo would’ve seriously considered eating haute Huttese cuisine before he ever tried another one of those acidically bland, salty, and mushy things.

How had he forgotten that Poe loved them? The offensively briny scent alone had long ago been seared into his memory.

“Yes,” the woman said, because of course this place had them. Why would they not? “You, uh, want them on your pasta?”

“Ignore Ben. I definitely want as many as you’re willing to give me.”

Her spine straightened smartly and she nodded, crisp. “Of course, sir.” There was, Kylo thought, maybe the tiniest hint of genius in his insistence on having the worst culinary taste in the system; it certainly gave her something else to think about besides Kylo’s presence at the table.

“What? Poe asked after she retreated to the kitchen to force the chefs to commit an abomination against good taste for Poe’s dubious pleasure.

“You’re disgusting,” was all Kylo was willing to say about it. All he could think about was every single damned time Poe tried to convince him seabells were an important part of Poe’s life and if Ben cared about him at all, he’d definitely try them. Multiple times. On flat breads and salads and, once, on ice cream.

Kylo was mostly certain Poe had only been trying to get a rise out of him on the last suggestion. Mostly.

Kylo’s mouth watered at the thought of it, a twinge of bile rising in his throat.

And in that moment, he couldn’t have been happier.

That was how he knew he had to do something. Bring this back to reality, where it belonged, remind himself that this was all a lie, that he couldn’t fall for Poe or Poe’s stupid, awful taste in food or any of the things he’d always loved about Poe before it all went wrong.

“What are you doing?” Kylo finally asked in a low, pained whisper, remaining too aware of the eyes around them, each set searching for the holes in their story.

Though Poe still looked cheerful enough, he couldn’t hide the way the glint in his eye shuttered and died. “My job. What are you doing?”

_I don’t know,_ he thought. Instead of answering, he remained silent and picked at the edge of the table with his thumb. _This is more than a job to me. So much more. I don’t want it this way. I don’t want it._

Poe huffed and scrubbed his hand across his eyes. “Listen,” he said, sounding as tired as Kylo had ever heard him. “I know it’s hard to believe I give a damn about—your…” his hand fluttered to encompass whatever it was he couldn’t say. “This whole thing.”

“It’s not,” Kylo said, “that hard to believe at all. You care about a lot of things you shouldn’t.” Not the one thing Kylo wanted him to, of course, but that was hardly the point and not Poe’s problem besides. “I’m thankful for it in this case.”

Poe flushed in either embarrassment or abashment, unusual for him. Shame and Poe Dameron had always been so deeply uninterested in ever crossing paths; they probably knew the other existed, they just didn’t care. “I’m just—” he sucked in a breath and laughed a little, hitching. “I wish I’d known sooner, I guess. What you’ve been up to. I had no idea.”

Perplexed, Kylo said, “Why? It doesn’t change anything.”

“It doesn’t—?! Ben, it—” But whatever he was going to say got cut off by the arrival of their meals. As expected, there was a huge, deliberately—perhaps spitefully—so, pile of blue-green gelatinous seabells under which Kylo presumed some manner of pasta sat. Poe smiled tightly at the Twi’lek woman. Even he looked a little queasy at the generous bounty laid before him. “Thank you so much. It looks amazing.”

Kylo was too haunted by the words Poe hadn’t said to concern himself overmuch with the ‘meal’ Poe had ordered. The possibilities left in the absence of words looped themselves around Kylo’s thoughts and would for as long as any possibilities remained open to him at all. He almost didn’t want Poe to finish speaking just so he could imagine what he wanted to instead.

The food he’d ordered—wine-braised nerf, Force, he didn’t even _like_ nerf, braised or otherwise—wafted a fragrant, teasing steam that managed to turn Kylo’s stomach despite the otherwise inoffensive scent of it. Pushing the plate away minutely, he took a sip of water.

“Can I get you anything else? Champagne or…”

Poe shook his head. “No. Thank you.” His eyes rested on Kylo’s meal and then lifted to his face. “We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

Before she was even out of earshot, Poe speared three of the seabells with his fork and popped the vile things into his mouth. He chewed far longer than any food should require chewing and, worse, didn’t seem to mind at all. If it wouldn’t have caused a scene and a scandal, he’d have throttled Poe.

Poe seemed to know it, too, because he just rolled his eyes.

And then he sighed and said, “Why didn’t you say something?”

Kylo couldn’t quite bite back the bark of laughter that welled him inside of him. “Would you have wanted to know?”

Poe pursed his lips and even though Kylo felt vindication at having left Poe even momentarily speechless, he wished, too, that Poe did have an answer. They both knew the truth, though, and Kylo couldn’t even blame him for it. “I should have wanted to know,” Poe finally settled on, unable to meet Kylo’s gaze. “But you’re probably right.”

He willed his voice not to crack with his next question. “So how is now any different?”

Poe’s fork glinted as he stabbed toward Kylo’s plate. “You gonna eat?”

“You gonna answer my question?”

Poe stretched across the table and snagged a piece of nerf meat from Kylo’s plate. He hummed, apparently pleased with the flavor, and nodded. After a moment, he spoke with exasperation. “You wanna know the truth? It doesn’t matter, man. You didn’t tell me and I didn’t find out from anyone else and, yeah, I probably would’ve dragged out through the mud for it. I would’ve been wrong.”

It did him next to no good to hear Poe’s admission and yet Kylo’s heart punched at his sternum and his palms prickled with enough sweat that he felt the need to twist his napkin between them. His mind clamored for the rest of him to calm. The rest of him, though, told his mind in no uncertain terms that it didn’t want to listen because it sounded very much like Poe was a little bit sorry about the state of their relationship and that alone was enough to set his stomach to fluttering. “I… thanks.” His fingers wrapped awkwardly around his fork. He still wasn’t hungry, but he could—

“Makes me wonder what else you haven’t told me.”

A chill ran down Kylo’s spine, ice snapping and splintering in his veins, freezing him in place. There were a lot of things Kylo hadn’t told him and not a single one of them did he want to admit to. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” It should have been said forcefully, a little meanly maybe; it only managed to come out sounding scared and small.

“It’s not probably,” Poe admitted, careless, reckless. It wasn’t him on the line here. “But we’ve been living together for weeks. For stars’ sake, we’re married. And I can’t get a fucking read on you anymore. I can’t… Ben, you’re—” His voice cracked and in that crack Kylo found an opening.

A glacier might have melted more quickly than the fear in Kylo’s heart. Poe was so very close to something that Kylo didn’t want him near. He would have put up barbed-wire fences around it, if he could, electrified the entire thing to keep Poe away. Poe shouldn’t have needed this reminder: “That’s not my name anymore.”

Poe’s eyes flashed. His jaw tightened. And he stared down his nose at Kylo.

“It’s as much your name as Kylo Ren.” His words were rushed, harsh, and now it was Poe’s turn to laugh. “I thought this shit was going to be hard because I thought I hated you. Leave it to you to—”

Kylo pushed himself to his feet. If it drew unwanted, negative attention, so be it. He’d never felt this cold before, not even on his worst days as Snoke’s apprentice. In most ways, it was still better than the white, hot fury he still sometimes grappled with, but right at this moment, numb to his core, he wouldn’t have been able to explain why. This just felt so, so much more dangerous.

He couldn’t listen to whatever it was that Poe had left to say. No matter what it was, it would hurt. “Excuse me,” he said, not bothering to indicate with more words that he didn’t want Poe to follow. His tone made it entirely obvious, he felt. More words would only get him into trouble. Already, more words threatened to spill from his mouth like so much trickling runoff.

So of course, instead of listening, Poe immediately reached for his wrist. And bad press be damned, Kylo yanked his arm out of reach, barely watching as Poe jerked as though to follow. Common sense must have prevailed, because Kylo made it onto the street and around the corner—at least three minutes of blessed freedom, time enough for Poe to settle up and do damage control—before Poe grabbed hold of him, his hand gripping firm to Kylo’s elbow. The only reason Kylo stilled, he told himself, was the cam droid that swivelled its photoreceptor in his direction, waiting for any scrap of salaciousness it could get its memory core on.

It wasn’t private here, but it was more private than the restaurant. Still, that wasn’t private enough for the searing, painful touch of Poe’s hand on his body.

With a flick of his wrist, the thing shorted out, a quiet, temporary death. He was sure he’d pay for that later, but right now, he could only breathe out in relief knowing that he could say, “Let go,” without the press getting a hold of it in order to reinterpret the whole of it how they saw fit. His body trembled, pathetic, as anguish spread through him. It was a living, pulsing creature, hungry and all-consuming and it shouldn’t have been able to get its claws into Kylo at all. He knew the score already; he knew how Poe felt. There was nothing here that this thing should have been able to sustain itself on.

But all Kylo could think about was the taste of Poe’s mouth, so much more recognizable than it should have been, and how much he wanted the civility Poe’d dragged up from the same place where his duty lived to be real, to mean something more. He’d already memorized every inch of Poe he’d touched, every cadence of his voice, and it wasn’t enough. These lies weren’t enough. This anguish should have died long ago.

“Please,” Kylo said. As though enchanted, he couldn’t bring himself to free himself from this particular trap. He told himself it was easy, that he’d already done it, that it would hurt less if he took this power away from Poe. All he had to do was break contact and it would be done. It was the right thing to do. He couldn’t let this continue.

And this time, he believed, it could be well and truly done. They would go back to base. Evaan would do what she could for him. It would be over.

“No, I—” Poe’s grip only tightened as a confused spray of emotions crossed his face in quick succession, so fast that Kylo couldn’t read any of them. But through the Force, he sensed pain and fear and hope. It shivered at the edge of Kylo’s awareness, a sweet, discordant note amidst the heat of his anger. He shoved Kylo back against the smooth duracrete of the building in front of which they’d stopped. And before Kylo could do more than parse the muttered curse Poe spoke, Poe kissed him.

With hands pressed against Kylo’s cheeks, nails digging into his skin, he _kissed_ him. Lips moving, harsh and punishing and a little cruel, he kissed Kylo like this was an argument to win, like he’d have rather punched Kylo. His mouth throbbed as though he _had_ been punched and, in fact, the beating his heart took might not ever heal. Everything in him said he should push Poe away; instead, he pulled him closer, giving to Poe everything he asked for and, more than that, everything he didn’t. Without words, he didn’t have to discriminate about what he handed over to Poe. He didn’t have to clarify. He could, if need be, pretend he hadn’t done it at all because no words defined each offering for what it truly was. This curl of his tongue was his loyalty. That nip of his teeth, an apology.

He’d have given away his last breath and called it love if Poe demanded it of him.

He might have done it anyway, so long as he didn’t have to admit to it.

“I’m tired of dancing around this shit,” Poe said, breathing harsh and fast against Kylo’s neck, his hands fisted in Kylo’s shirt. His voice was quiet, tired compared the maelstrom that seemed to engulf the both of them.

Kylo had always been weak and foolish.

He said, “I am, too.”


	5. Chapter 5

Their return to the hotel passed in such a confused blur that Kylo wouldn’t have been able to explain their path back if someone thought to ask. Presumably their security detail, who’d kept their distance all evening anyway, would know, though they’d already begun to ease the attention with which they guarded them, a blessing as far as Kylo was concerned. Alderaanians weren’t generally, Orin excepted, known for their grand displays of violence and Kylo was fairly certain he could handle anything that was thrown his way. Their detail was a formality, really. Even if they disappeared entirely, everything would’ve been fine.

He was especially glad now to think they had lost interest in their work. With Poe nearly plastered to his side—and how much of this was genuine and how much his last, best push for public legitimacy, there was no denying they looked like a couple right now—the less scrutiny he got, the better.

They waited for long, agonizing minutes as the turbolift made its slow descent to floor level. The numbers above the door clicked in slow, even measures, and Poe’s dependable warmth along his side threatened to drive him entirely around the bend of his own sanity. He so stupidly wanted to touch, to all the hells with privacy and discretion and good taste.

Finally, the turbolift dinged to announce its arrival, spilling laughing, possibly drunk guests into the lobby. One shoved distractedly past Poe, jostling him so hard that he jostled Kylo in turn.

A live wire might have shocked him less.

“Sorry, man,” the happily inebriated guest said, shrugging and twisting around once before jogging toward the exit, unable to know just what he’d done, how the unexpected contact send sparks of electricity through Kylo and shot his heartbeat so high that it left Kylo a little short of breath, lightheaded and aching.

“Fuck,” Poe said, quiet. “Sorry, I—”

Kylo squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s fine, just—” The turbolift was blessedly, silently empty as they stepped inside.

And then another guest, a man young enough to also think running in a lobby was acceptable behavior, lunged for the turbolift. A comparatively polite, “Hold, please,” was spoken, voice slightly raised to counteract the effect of exertion on the sound of it. Kylo wasn’t in a mood to give anyone credit for anything, but even he was impressed by the wide array of emotions he went through upon seeing his fellow occupants. Fear, dismay, awkward acceptance that ended in him studiously avoiding their gazes and selecting a floor suspiciously close to the lobby.

Perhaps it was frustration that had Poe saying, “Hey, how’s it going?” in a reasonable facsimile of his usual, easy-going greetings. The sharp edge hidden inside its casual delivery was only really palpable to Kylo.

The man didn’t answer and Poe merely snickered, waiting just long enough for him to get off to say, “You know, I’m getting really tired of these—”

“Me, too,” Kylo said, thrumming with the need he kept caged in his chest. Finally, they had privacy again, and Kylo couldn’t bring himself to move for fear of destroying whatever remained of the moment. The worst part was, he could feel Poe’s impatience, his anticipation, too, and that made him want to be reckless.

Every moment, Kylo was certain Poe would find what remained of his senses and shun Kylo, that they’d…

The turbolift jolted to a stop, dinged politely, and opened into the suite. And then Kylo didn’t have time to think of anything all.

Because Poe dragged him into the suite.

And pushed him toward the bed.

And said something that might have been, “You infuriating fucking—”

He yanked at his own clothing instead of finishing the remark, which was just as well, since Kylo could guess the tenor of his thoughts anyway.

Kylo sat on the edge of the bed and watched, keen, as Poe took his jacket off, shrugged suspenders from his shoulders, and attacked the clasps on his shirt so ferociously that Kylo wondered what other grave harm they did to Poe that he’d be so vicious with them. “Hey,” he said, drumming up what little daring he could, stretching to hook his fingers around the suspenders to pull Poe forward. “What did that shirt ever do to you?”

If he could just distract himself enough, he wouldn’t have the time to question why in the hell Poe wanted to do this with him.

“It existed,” Poe replied, but he acquiesced to Kylo’s less forceful ministrations, stilling as Kylo’s fingers worked at each delicate, pearlescent catch, mostly hidden along the side seams. It was a ridiculous article of clothing, but Kylo couldn’t say it didn’t look amazing on him.

“Where did you even get it?”

“I own nice things,” Poe insisted, too vehement for the words to be anything other than bullshit. When Kylo raised his eyebrow at him, he sighed. “I can requisition nice things from Ceevee when pressed. Listen, can we get back to…?”

Once, Kylo might have teased Poe for his eagerness, but here and now, Kylo still half-stunned that Poe was even allowing him to do this, it felt too much like borrowing trouble. “Okay.” It was only when his hands started shaking that he realized trouble had already been well and truly borrowed. Fumbling at one of the last of the clasps, his fingers grazing against the lightweight fabric of Poe’s undershirt, he inhaled, sharp and deep.

As though that wasn’t bad enough, Poe’s hands covered his and took over again. He attacked the shirt with renewed verve until he could finally slip it off his shoulders. Free of it, he balled it up and threw it toward the wall where it landed in a wrinkled heap. Bending down, Poe grabbed hold of Kylo’s face and lifted his chin, bringing their mouths together in a gentler kiss than Kylo expected, something that made Kylo’s heart lurch and his head spin. It only remained gentle for a moment though, at which point Poe pressed for more, biting at Kylo’s lip, licking at his mouth, demanding more of Kylo than Kylo would ever give to anyone else.

Heat curled itself tight in Kylo’s body before unfurling and sweeping through him, pushing aside every thought in his head except for _yes_ and _now_ and _please_. When Poe’s hands slid down to his neck, they pulled at the fabric of his robes, and he huffed, breaking the kiss long enough to groan. “These fucking things,” was all he said. “Come on. Get up.”

Instead of arguing, he complied, bunching and pulling the fabric over his head. When he emerged from beneath it, he flushed, seeing Poe’s close scrutiny of him, the rough drag of Poe’s eyes over his torso. There was a hunger in his gaze that Kylo wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before, despairing in its intensity. It threatened to take Kylo’s breath away.

And not only because Kylo felt an answering desperation within himself.

It had never been like this before, so brutal and fragile all at once.

Without even talking about it—they were, for the moment, beyond needing anything more than touch and taste, warmth and closeness—they finished peeling one another out of their clothes. Kylo took Poe’s undershirt. Poe unlaced Kylo’s pants and this time, it was his hands that shook.

Poe’s mouth curled, rueful, like he finally realized they shouldn’t be doing this, but as he stepped out of his underwear, Kylo found, shockingly, that he didn’t even care anymore. If they were going to make this mistake, then, damn it, he was going to commit to it.

Because Poe was every bit as beautiful as he’d always been, beautiful in every way, and Kylo had never wanted him as much as he wanted him now. This late in the game, that was enough.

Poe’s body might have carried scars Kylo didn’t know the history of. His muscles may have grown more defined, his shoulders a bit broader, hips sharper, but he was still the man Kylo had known and cared for. Though Kylo mourned that he hadn’t been here to see these changes for himself, he couldn’t deny how grateful he was for the opportunity now. He reached and drew his hand back and didn’t try again until Poe rolled his eyes and grabbed for him.

As Kylo shuddered, Poe placed their joined hands on his chest. His heart bounded furiously, wonderously against Kylo’s palm and he nodded, approving, as Kylo’s eyes widened. “This might be a dumb idea,” Poe said, bravado heavy on his tongue, “but I’m not going anywhere.”

_It’s not,_ Kylo wanted to say, but he tried to limit how much he lied to himself on a daily basis and just this once, he couldn’t. “I guess it wouldn’t be the first time I woke up regretting something I did the night before.” It was a dare, a brag, the truth in name alone.

And Poe picked it up and ran with it, a challenging grin on his face as he crowded Kylo against the bed until he had to push back or sit again.

He chose to sit. And for his troubles, Poe urged him to scoot up the bed, the back of his hand slapping lightly, just once, at his midsection, cool against his skin. “Force, you’re so—”

But again, Poe couldn’t bring himself to finish what he intended to say, cutting himself off viciously as he straddled Kylo’s hips. Their bodies ground together as Poe hissed and cursed, leaning forward to press himself more fully against Kylo. He whined a little in the back of his throat and whined again as Kylo lifted his hand to brush through his curls and pull him down into a kiss. When Poe groaned in approval, he tightened his grip.

A charge coursed through him as Poe’s weight settled more fully on him, blanketing him, smothering him in the best possible way. Poe bit and sucked marks into his skin, haphazard, as though he couldn’t decide where he wanted to start and end—or even if he wanted to do either of those things. Kylo arched into each scrape of Poe’s teeth against his skin, shivered and tensed as Poe gripped his hand and held tight to it, hissed when Poe shifted his hips just so. Pleasure sparked inside of him, as dangerous as flint striking iron. If it found kindling, it would consume him.

A conflagration, he thought, might not be the worst way to go.

“Have you considered not thinking so much?” Poe asked against his clavicle, his free hand roaming across his chest and down his stomach. His voice was breathy at the very least and his words were warm and humid against Kylo’s skin. They were spoken plaintively, with hesitation.

“Have you considered not talking so much,” Kylo answered, half his mind on what Poe was doing rather than the words he was saying, words at which Poe laughed in disbelief.

“Okay.” Poe’s tone suggested nothing so much as a challenge and suddenly his hands and mouth seemed to be everywhere all at once, finding every spot that Poe had known so intimately and exploiting it. His fingers skimmed across Kylo’s ribs, clever and teasing, fanning across nipples Kylo had forgotten were so sensitive, each touch a shock and a pulse in one. He’d forgotten a lot about himself in the years since they were together last.

His mouth found Kylo’s again and ‘don’t think too much’ became a silent demand that wasn’t so difficult to pull off. Every thought disintegrated under the careful tug of Poe’s teeth, the light brush of his tongue against Kylo’s. Poe said nothing, but Kylo didn’t need words to understand Poe perfectly.

And then Poe shifted, one of those clever, teasing hands wrapping around him, and it really didn’t matter what Kylo was thinking before, he only thought of fire and bad ideas and how good it was to have Poe pressing him into the mattress and how much he’d prefer to get burned than to give this up.

“Fuck,” Poe swore, quiet, moving faster. For a moment, he looked down at Kylo with—but Kylo wasn’t supposed to be thinking anymore, he certainly shouldn’t let his thoughts run away with him, not when the word that flitted through his mind was awe—before he glanced away again, lowering his eyes and tilting his head so that his gaze was hidden. Something like hope built itself up inside of Kylo, something delicate that needed desperately to be quashed before it ran roughshod over the rest of him.

He could not quash it; but he did not give into it either.

Pushing at Poe’s shoulder and batting his hand away, he flipped them, smiling in satisfaction when that somehow marveling look on Poe’s face darkened with arousal, turning into something that could be understood even within the context of their relationship as it stood right now. A satisfied smile curled at the corner of Poe’s mouth and that, that Kylo could work with.

It was easier this way, Kylo thought, and even Poe seemed to relax a bit as he stretched out and waited to see what Kylo would do, curious and wanting. Hands somehow steady, Kylo traced and catalogued the scars he didn’t recognize, found the old ones he did. There, the result of a spill on a swoop bike. Here, the whiplike pucker of skin across his bicep from the time Poe decided skinny dipping in waters that contained Yavinese jellies was a smart idea. A few of the new ones formed recognizable shapes from which he could reconstruct the wound: starbursts from blaster fire, jagged cuts from bits of shrapnel, a map of wartime Kylo would clear away if he could.

Perhaps he was grateful that none of the scars he’d left were physical ones. And then he dashed that thought against the rock wall inside his skull. What he’d done was worse. Always. He couldn’t forget that.

His thumb swept across Poe’s cheek. Where he got that one, Kylo couldn’t determine at all. It was too delicate to guess at. Then Poe’s head turned into the touch and it didn’t matter anymore.

“Are you just going to stare or what?” Poe’s voice rasped its way through the question, caught in a net of desire that Kylo recognized; if he were to speak, he would sound just the same. It was a taunt and a trap that Kylo knew well and could avoid if he wanted to.

He did not want to, wanted to fall into every trap that Poe laid and then some, but the thought of dragging this out was too seductive not to give him pause. He would, in fact, have delayed the inevitable end of this for as long as possible, a dangerous proposition. Poe wasn’t generally a mercurial sort, his tics and foibles always made sense, but he did get impatient. And that impatience manifested sometimes in surprising ways.

He brushed his hair out of his face, raked his gaze and hands over the ripple of Poe’s muscles. Beneath his lightly scratching nails, Poe’s stomach tensed and quivered. When he reached the bones of Poe’s hips, he stopped, and he ignored completely the part of Poe that Poe was most interested in having touched. “Forgive me. There’s a lot to stare at.”

Groaning, Poe scoffed and slammed his head back against the pillow in frustration. He stretched, an effort that did nothing to dislodge Kylo nor dissuade him from his course, though perhaps it was meant to. “Fuck,” Poe said. “I forgot how much of an asshole you could be.”

It was easier this way, listening to Poe gripe at him while he focused on rediscovering all of the places Poe used to enjoy being touched. Better to puzzle over that than over the fact that Poe was here at all. Did he still enjoy the swipe of Kylo’s thumb down his sides? The careful press of fingers to the back of his knees?

“Are you gonna—?” And Poe shifted again, his body surging beneath Kylo’s. _Unfair_ , Kylo’s mind clamored. _Unfair, unfair_. A fresh wave of need crested inside of him, shredding the self-control he was trying desperately to cultivate. Biting back a gasp, he shifted, too, pulling back in order to kiss a trail down Poe’s stomach, warm and pliant beneath every brush of Kylo’s lips. He was fully hard by the time Kylo reached his destination, and flushed. When Kylo smiled against Poe’s hip bone and scraped his teeth over the protrusion of it, Poe muttered a curse and sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah, okay, you’re gonna.”

He hadn’t done this in years, but he remembered the weight of Poe on his tongue, the warm scent of him in his nostrils, and as he took the length of him in his mouth, tentative, he closed his eyes and listened for the heady, arousing sounds of Poe’s various imprecations.

He’d always been so very eloquent in the throes of passion, dredging up curses from planets Kylo hadn’t even heard of. It would have made Kylo laugh if every moan, grunt, and oath didn’t tangle itself up in the pleasure Kylo felt in turn, each sound unearthing feelings he hadn’t known himself still capable of. Pride. Joy. Exhilaration. He catalogued every bit of noise, filed it all away because this would be the only time he’d hear them again probably and they were all the more precious for that.

Closed eyed, he fixated on Poe’s every reaction: his shudder when Kylo’s teeth grazed over the sensitive underside of his cock, the way he bucked when Kylo dipped his head just so.

He was so intent on what he was doing that he startled when Poe’s hand tangled in his hair, held tight to the back of his head, not forceful, but so present that Kylo’s concentration shattered and he felt everything he himself had been holding back. An inferno blazed through him, burned pleasure into every nerve of his body all at once, overwhelming in its intensity. For a moment, he was paralyzed, pinned, torn between wanting this to last forever and doing the right, reasonable thing and putting an end to this madness because he would never, ever get what he wanted out of it.

It would feel so good to let go of it all.

“You bastard,” Poe said, rolling his hips and freeing himself from Kylo’s mouth. He grappled for Kylo’s arm, hauled him up and pulled him into a desperate embrace, his nails digging into the skin of Kylo’s back deep enough to leave marks. Their bodies dragged against one another, rough and fast and hard, Poe demanding a brutal pace as one of his hands slipped between them. Between panting breaths he added, “I can’t fucking believe you. You—”

He buried his face against Kylo’s neck, gasping with each awkward, straining stroke. Despite the hindered cadence of Poe’s touch, Kylo’s body climbed inch by agonizing inch, toward orgasm.

“I wish I could hate you,” Poe said finally, vicious and grueling, pushing Kylo over the edge before he jumped right alongside him. Warmth spilled between them, mingled, sticky proof of this connection they shared, this one moment of closeness. Weakness on his part, madness on Poe’s.

And then he heard words that weren’t meant for him, shouldn’t have been his, words he didn’t have a right to and wouldn’t have wanted even if they were spoken aloud.

_I wish I didn’t still love you_.

* 

It was easy, in a way, to pretend after that, pretend that none of this mattered, pretend that Kylo hadn’t heard the truth in Poe’s heart so clearly that the words still rang in his ears whenever he thought of Poe. He could take no pleasure in the fact of it. There was no joy in knowing…

Well, Kylo understood what it felt like to want to wish feelings away, anyway. It never worked, of course, but it didn’t mean anything either. It didn’t mean that Kylo could confess, too, and make the entire thing end happily for them. It didn’t mean that Poe even wanted him to acknowledge it and apologize. It didn’t mean that Poe wanted to be with him in any way, shape, or form, even after what they’d done together.

Kylo knew, too, how aberrations felt.

He stood with his hands wrapped around the balcony’s railings, as far away as he could get from the bed where Poe still slept, unaware of what Kylo had heard and felt and wanted. There was a chill in the air that even the regulating shield couldn’t banish entirely. Bracing, it stole the breath from Kylo’s lungs. He would have gladly let it steal more, the ache in his heart maybe, or the frigid band of humiliation that held him in its vice-tight grip.

The sound of footsteps broke through the layer of ice in which Kylo mentally surrounded himself. It chipped and cracked the façade, like a pick driven through a glacier, but even so it wounded him.

“I think we should go back,” Kylo said as soon as the footsteps stopped, refusing to probe Poe’s thoughts more deeply than he’d already done accidentally. “To the base. We’ve done what we can here.” He swallowed. How to make this more palatable? “I think my mother will want to know about the—about Orin.”

He still hadn’t commed her and he knew he should have.

There was no answer for a stretch of seconds and then an exhalation. “Okay. Makes sense to me. Is that what you want?” His gaze was searching, but what it saw, Kylo couldn’t say and didn’t dare think too much about.

It wasn’t at all what Kylo wanted, but he knew mostly how to resign himself to the inevitable. “Yes,” he answered, as neutral as he knew how to be, “it’s what I want.”

If he’d thought the magtrain ride before was slow, it had nothing on this one, not when it took place in the bright light of day, other passengers staring openly, with vicious curiosity, and Poe’s hand gripped in his.

He gripped back tightly, fiercely, the last weakness he was willing to allow himself.

* 

“Do you want to get some food in the mess?” Poe asked, hesitating in the doorway of his own room.

It was strange to be back. Their quarters here had seemed so much bigger before. Even after only a handful of days, Kylo had gotten used to having some space to move in, the suite they’d lived in luxuriously large. Already, he missed the balcony.

He missed a lot of things.

“No.” He ducked his head, shy suddenly and sick at heart. “Thank you. I have things to attend to. Maybe later though.”

He looked up in time to see Poe smiling slightly at him. “Don’t take too long. I could eat.”

Kylo swallowed back bile and nodded, distrusting his own voice for a moment. “You don’t have to wait for me.”

Poe waved him off with an unconcerned gesture. “Eh, I don’t mind.”

Kylo’s eyes narrowed at the floor; he stopped himself from saying something that he would regret.

* 

Kylo stood, rigid, before his mother’s desk, fighting the urge to pace back and forth before it. One hand wrapped around the opposite wrist behind his back to keep him from gesticulating as wildly as the energy inside of his demanded him to. Move, it said, lash out. Bite and slash and scream if you have to.

Get what you want by any means necessary.

“I take it your honeymoon wasn’t everything you hoped it would be,” Leia said, not unsympathetic, but brusque.

“Senator Verlaine accomplished more for Drethida than I could have asked for,” he answered, cool and professional—at least, that was what he was trying for. “And she seemed to think it helped.” _That’s more_ , he thought, _than you’ve been able to do_. “Who am I to say otherwise?”

The dry look Leia threw his way suggested she believed otherwise. Her words confirmed it. “Ben, you’ve never once in your life held your tongue with me. Don’t start now. It doesn’t suit you. Say what you want to say. We’re all too busy for anything else.”

“I think we’ve proved the usefulness of this endeavor has been… limited,” he said. Professional. Calm. Utterly logical. “You were trying to protect me from people who want to harm me.” _For good reason, I suppose._ “Making me seem more likeable didn’t stop a man from trying to kill me and it just makes Admiral Dameron more vulnerable to attack as well. Your reason for wanting this is moot.” He swallowed. This was the more difficult admission to make. “And nobody is ever going to trust me just because he’s pretending to see something in me that’s not there.”

“You just said Senator Verlaine said being married to Poe helped.”

“Senator Verlaine is a great deal more invested in the idea that I can be rehabilitated than the average politician. I got lucky. It helped, but it’s not going to be some panacea that allows me to accomplish the work I want to accomplish. There’s no point in making Poe suffer just on the off chance it might be useful to me.” He didn’t say it, but he was sure his mother heard anyway: _I’m selfish, but I’m not that selfish. Not anymore._

“You do realize how this will look, right? Annulling so soon?” Leia’s attention flicked to a spot over Kylo’s shoulder, so brief as to be almost unnoticeable, before she recentered her gaze on him. “Why not at least wait until Evaan’s put forth her proposal in the Senate?”

Kylo flushed and quieted the part of his mind that gnashed at the chains he threw around it. “Under the circumstances, I find the idea of continuing this farce abhorrent. I would rather look like the fool I’ve so obviously been this whole time. But if that’s what you want, fine. I just wanted you to be the first to know that this is done. Congratulations, you were right.”

Her eyebrow climbed her forehead. “And what about Poe? Maybe you should—” She sighed, as though disgusted, and though Kylo thought he might have heard the door to her office click, he paid it no mind. She had aides and droids, loyal to the core, who worked for her. It wasn’t their fault if they stepped into her office during an unscheduled meeting, but Kylo trusted none of them would squeal.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone heard she and Kylo arguing.

Relaxing back into her seat, she stared up at Kylo and crossed her arms, expectation and disappointment daring him to give him to give her a worthy explanation. It was the same look she wore every time he did something unfathomably stupid.

Waving a dismissive hand through the air, Kylo scoffed. “Poe won’t have to be married to me anymore. I’m sure that will be worth something to him.” It was nearly impossible to keep the acid-burn of his bitterness from crawling up his throat and spilling out of his mouth as even more ill-considered words.

Leia sighed and brushed her hands over her eyes. “Okay,” she said, weary. “So have it annulled or get a divorce or whatever it is you want to do. You’re well within your right to do so and you don’t need my permission. Given your history, I should probably have worked harder to dissuade you both the minute you threw down that particularly unwise gauntlet.”

Kylo opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think of anything more to say that wouldn’t sound grudging or reveal too much of the truth. She was already peering at him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. She didn’t need to figure out that he’d gone and let his feelings get in the way.

“But I’m also going to tell you,” she said, “that you probably should have talked to Poe about it first.”

With a laugh, Kylo shook his head. “I can safely assure you that Poe won’t care.”

Stilling, Leia blinked a few times and then furrowed her brow. Evaluating, calculating, her eyes narrowed. “I say this with all possible love and affection a mother could muster for her son: you’ve got about as much sense in your head as the rest of your family. Which at this point isn’t much. One way or another, Poe cares about damned near everything. Too much.” She jerked her head toward the door. “Go talk to him. Seriously. For all the good it’ll do, I can make it an order if I have to.”

“I’ll—”

“You’ll work it out with him,” she said and it wasn’t a question or a suggestion. “I won’t have this affecting my base.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kylo tossed off a snotty, sloppy salute, the only urge he’d allow himself to express at the moment, and sneered. “It won’t.”

She only rolled her eyes at him in return, a flash of displeasure visible for a moment before she apparently decided better of it. Softening, she did say, “I’m glad you came home safe. I am sorry about what happened with Mr. Zelira. Thank you for—just. Thank you. For coming back in one piece.”

“I…” But he didn’t have to say anything. Leia nodded in understanding and gestured not unkindly toward the door. Nothing about their relationship had ever been easy, but sometimes—sometimes it wasn’t difficult either.

He considered himself lucky as he stepped into the hallway.

He considered himself lucky, at least, until he found himself confronted with an equally displeased set of dark brown eyes in that hallway. Poe’s dark eyes. Displeased and… hurt?

No, not possible. It was just a trick of the light, because when Kylo really studied them, he saw nothing but the displeasure there. Displeasure and… definitely anger. Fury, possibly. And embarrassment.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t see the punch coming; it was just that a part of him didn’t think to get out of the way of it in time to avoid it. And that part was his jaw mostly. But even though pain bloomed in his face, the ache subsided almost immediately. He didn’t even cut his lip on his teeth.

“You pulled that,” he said, running his tongue over the inside of his cheek. In both directions, the hallway was abandoned and, for that, Kylo was grateful. For Poe’s sake, if not his own. It wouldn’t do for Admiral Dameron to be seen throwing punches, not even at people who definitely deserved it.

“Fuck you.”

Kylo’s hand rubbed at his chin. It obviously wasn’t one of Leia’s aides or her droids who’d stepped inside at just the wrong moment. “How much did you hear?”

His hands, both of them, like he thought he’d need a spare fist if Kylo kept talking, balled up tight at his sides. “Enough.”

Kylo clenched and relaxed his jaw, testing the throb for its edges and boundaries. This definitely wasn’t Poe’s best. “I’ll say.”

He was just so very tired of fighting—himself, his mother, Poe, the Force-damned galaxy. It was all just one long fight. And he was sick of it. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“Who are you to tell me what’ll make me happy? I don’t commit to things I don’t intend to see through. If I had a problem, I’d tell you. You think I’d just—”

They shouldn’t have been having this conversation in the hallway; they shouldn’t have been having this conversation at all.

“And since when are you motivated by what makes me happy anyway? Things would’ve gone a lot differently for us if you were, I can tell you that much.”

“Stop,” Kylo said, quiet, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. He could feel a scream building in his chest, his throat. Pressure exerted itself, threatening to burst out and collapse inward. His temper hadn’t gotten this much the better of him in a long time.

Poe’s finger stabbed at Kylo’s chest and something in Kylo snapped.

Now plenty furious and embarrassed for the both of them, too, he said, “You can go back to wishing you didn’t love me in peace and I can go back to pretending none of it ever mattered.” Snarling, he added, “I think that’s for the best, don’t you?”

Poe blanched and then, face a rictus of incandescent rage poorly controlled, reddened.

This time, Kylo caught him around the wrist before he could land the blow. Stopped within centimeters of his face, this punch had not been pulled. It might well have broken Kylo’s nose. He didn’t even realize what he’d said to instigate it until Poe wrenched his hand out of Kylo’s grasp. Backing up a few steps, Poe pointed at him, jabbing his finger in the air viciously. “Go fuck yourself.”

He swallowed back the apology that found itself sitting on his tongue, caged by his teeth. Poe wouldn’t want to hear it. And anyway, his striding gait ate up enough distance that he was halfway down the hall before Kylo could even formulate it into an acceptable one.

And anyway, Kylo was doing him a favor. If he really wanted a reason remember why he hated Kylo, Kylo was more than happy to give him a reason.

It was easier than the alternative.

* 

C-3PO, fluent in six million forms of communication, easily drew up the divorce papers—“Of course, sir, I’m well-versed in New Alderaanian legal language and documentation requirements. It would be no trouble at all. Dare I ask, sir, the reason you wish to begin separation procedures?”—and had them transferred to Kylo’s personal pad within moments upon receipt of the answer. This could all be done right this second, like peeling a bacta patch from a still-healing wound.

It would have been the smart thing to do, the right thing to do.

“Threepio?” Kylo asked, kinder than he wanted to be, but well aware of C-3PO’s desire to always behave with decorum, to always prove himself helpful. As far as manipulations went, it barely warranted the name. Guilt still lashed itself into a tight ball in his stomach for the abuse of C-3PO’s nature. “Let’s keep this between us”

“Of course, sir.” He looked as though he wanted to say something else, a flicker of interest in his photoreceptors giving him away. But whether he was still afraid of Kylo or because he’d found tact somewhere along the way, he refrained.

If Kylo didn’t send the contract to Poe immediately, only he and C-3PO knew it.

* 

He did remove the ring though. Placed it in the center of the table in their quarters, took a chance and assumed Poe wouldn’t be coming back until he’d calmed down at the very earliest, which could’ve been hours or days or longer. He stared for a long time at the smooth, polished metal, unadorned. He imagined it fitting a much smaller hand. Or any hand other than his own.

He hoped, if and when it was resized again, it would stay put wherever it found its home.

Poe deserved at least that much.

* 

“Have you considered apologizing?” Rey said, peevish, as she sat across from Kylo at their customary table in the mess hall. It was a habit they both loathed and kept to anyway if for no other reason than because it made everyone else a little less nervous around him.

“No,” Kylo answered.

Rey didn’t speak again, choosing to more wisely spend her time by shoveling her meal into her mouth with enough single-minded determination that Kylo could have mistaken her for a starving Loth-wolf instead. That was what he liked best about Rey; she could only beat her head against so many walls until she got tired of it and she’d long ago reached her limit with Kylo.

There was relief in knowing exactly where you stood with a person.

* 

GENEROUS AID PACKAGE PUSHED THROUGH SENATE AS PART OF COMPREHENSIVE BUDGET RIDER. DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST FAVORITISM TOWARD FIRST ORDER TERRITORIES PLANNED.

_In a bold move, Senator Evaan Verlaine of New Alderaan, along with support from legislators from various Mid Rim worlds and worlds near the Borderlands, has managed to…_

The door to Kylo’s office chimed, distracting Kylo from the one bit of good news he’d had the chance to read in weeks. Until this moment, he hadn’t really thought it would work, that Evaan would be able to pull it off for him, and certainly not this soon. He kept this in mind when he said, “Enter,” because chances were good whatever was behind that door would wipe away all thoughts of success, of progress, of his hard work paying off.

He glanced at the chrono that ticked down every hour of every day he spent in this damned place. Regular and true, it never lied to him and now it told him it’d maybe been thirty minutes since he’d sent the divorce papers to Poe, since he’d received word that Evaan had succeeded. Thirty long, agonizing minutes that he’d spent doing anything and everything to distract himself from what was to come.

Poe. Here. As close as they’ve been to one another since Poe punched him and so damned appealing that Kylo very nearly did apologize on the off-chance he wasn’t returning the pad with every signature it required to undo the truly massive mistake they’d made. His hair fell, lank, into his face, eyes that seemed so very expressionless, devoid of everything except exhaustion. Purple bruised the skin under his eyes. He looked wan and a bit waxen, stiff and statuesque, like just being here might shatter him into a thousand pieces.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Kylo said. It wasn’t a question. He wasn’t sure where Poe’d stashed himself in his off-hours, but it certainly wasn’t their quarters.

“You sure know how to give a guy a complex,” Poe retorted. “You’re not looking that great yourself.”

Kylo’s lip twitched; he wasn’t amused. He held out his hand to take the pad. “Is it done?”

Poe sat in one of the chairs on the other side of Kylo’s desk. The pad remained in his hands, held tight to his chest. “Do you want it to be?” Before he could answer, Poe held up his hand. “And for once in your Force-damned life, tell me the truth.” It came out plaintive and brittle. “Since apparently you’ve got me at a pretty significant disadvantage there.”

“I didn’t—” _I never meant to hear that. I didn’t want to hear it._

“Spare me your excuses. Because you sent some seriously mixed signals and I just—I’m tired of second-guessing everything we did. Just tell me it wasn’t all a lie. Or tell me it was. At this point, I’m not even sure what I want.”

There were so many ways Kylo could answer this, so many things he wanted, and desperately enough that it frightened him sometimes. The words crowded his throat, stopped themselves up before he could get any of them out. Every second stretched before him, Poe growing more unhappy the longer they stretched, until finally Poe huffed in disgust and leaned forward, slammed the pad hard enough against the desk that Kylo thought it might crack.

Then, he pushed himself to his feet and slapped his other hand against the desk, right next to the pad. Something clicked against his palm, muffled by the weight of it, but audible all the same.

When he drew his hand away, the ring remained behind, damning evidence of the exact and only thing Kylo really wanted.

“That was only ever meant for you,” Poe said, a bitter laugh in his voice, better suited to a fool who’d finally learned better. “It’s been yours for longer now than my mother ever got to wear it. There’s no point in me keeping it now that I know what it looks like on your finger.”

He got as far as the door before he added, “I hope it was worth it.”

Ice crept through Kylo’s veins, a protective measure perhaps, to keep him from doing something so stupid as—

“Wait.” His voice cracked. “Poe, wait.”

And Kylo had to give him this much credit, he did, even though Kylo half-expected him to leave, quietly—or maybe not so quietly—disappear from Kylo’s life forever. Nobody would blame him if he did. There was only so much personal history a person could bear before it got to be too much. As he stood, he felt as though he was fighting against muscles made of marble, intractable and immovable, but stand he did and round the corner of his desk he did and bring himself to within a meter or two of Poe he did.

The one thing he didn’t do was reach out, even as Poe tipped his chin in challenge, daring him to do something, anything, make a stupid move so this thing between them would finally, totally obliterate itself. It would be the merciful thing to do.

But Poe had asked for the truth and Kylo had already spent weeks doing what he thought was best for Poe and failing at it. Even he could learn something eventually.

“This whole time, I only ever wanted it to be real, even when I thought you only hated me,” he said in a not-quite mumble, unable to meet Poe’s eyes. “I want you, but more than that I want you not to feel burdened by whatever feelings you still… have for me.” _Let the past die_ , he thought, not a little caustic. There was good advice buried in there somewhere. “I want what you want.”

Poe’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open slightly. “You said the thought of being married to me was abhorrent to you.”

“‘Under the circumstances,’ yes.”

“The circumstances being…?” Poe spoke the words through gritted teeth.

“You’re not this stupid.”

Poe held up his hands in a warding gesture. “Apparently I am since I so thoroughly misconstrued the meaning of the word abhorrent. Just—please. Indulge me.”

“I never intended to use your feelings for me to put you in this position. I… honestly didn’t know you still had any.”

“Until you…?” Poe waved his hand around his temple. When Kylo nodded, he swore. “I really fucking hate that you can do that, you know.”

“I didn’t mean to. I haven’t since… it just happened. It happens sometimes.” Kylo swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

Poe huffed in dark amusement and flicked his apology aside with a careless gesture. “Oh, don’t I know it. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you’d been snooping on my thoughts the whole time.” He huffed again, this time a little less darkly. “Huh. So the part where we fucked, that was all just me manfully taking one for the team to ensure the marriage looked real, is that it?”

Flushing, body warm with embarrassment and remembrance, Kylo glared at the floor and scuffed his boot. When it was put to him that way, it did sound a little stupid. “You tell me.”

Poe sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The thumb of his other hand rubbed across the back of his wedding band. “Put the ring back on. That thing’s been waiting a long time to be where it ended up. The least we can do is give it a shot. If that’s alright with you?”

It wasn’t a guarantee, but the smile Poe offered him, small and rueful and just the littlest bit softer than Kylo was used to, felt like a pledge—and one that Kylo intended to keep as long as Poe was willing to put up with him.

* 

Kylo laced his fingers together and, elbows braced on his knees, tucked his hands beneath his chin as he leaned forward. He didn’t often have time to watch Holonet reports—it was so much easier skimming the wire services for the highlights—but for this he was eager to make an exception. After all, he hadn’t seen the surface of Drethida since he was there himself, unable to slaughter wholesale the portion of the population that didn’t want to capitulate to Snoke’s demands, quotas, and threats.

He would have had less blood on his hands if he’d seen Snoke’s demands through, but at least—

At least there was this.

No journalist would yet set foot on its surface, sending droids and cam droids in their stead, but the narration along with the images got the point across well enough. The news reporter spoke in a professional, calm monotone, explaining the footage as it was presented to the audience, all things Kylo knew already and intimately so. In fact, he could’ve muted the sound if he’d wanted to.

It had been months since the budget was passed and now, finally, aid was beginning to be distributed.

“Today sees the deployment of atmospheric scrubbers above Drethida, a mineral-rich world in a system just beyond the Borderlands. Reports state that the former Supreme Leader, a mysterious figure known only as Snoke, killed after the Battle of Starkiller Base by his apprentice, the controversial son of General Leia Organa, ordered the atmosphere poisoned for failing to comply with his orders that the planet be mined by the local population. Details remain scarce, but as you can see, the need here is not. In addition to atmospheric scrubbers, droids are busy distributing rebreathers and personal scrubbers to the most vulnerable populations. Local leaders—”

The door slid open, drawing Kylo’s attention away from the report and to Poe, who stood in the doorway, his arms crossed nervously over his chest, his shoulders hunched. There was a small cylindrical container in one of his hands. Made of white plastoid, it drew Kylo’s eye. “Congratulations,” Poe said, nodding toward the holoprojector as he stepped, ginger and uncertain, into their quarters. “Long time coming.”

“Yeah.” Leaning toward the holoprojector’s controls, he turned it down. He could catch a repeat later, or another network’s coverage entirely. “I wasn’t expecting you back this soon. What’s up?”

“Pava cut me some slack,” Poe said, depositing the cylinder on the table, self-consciously turning it this way and that until he was satisfied with its placement. He fell back onto the couch and stretched, shifting closer to Kylo as he scratched at his temple with his thumb, abashed. “Or put me out of my misery, take your pick.”

“She said you were useless to her,” Kylo replied, “I’d wager.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Poe shrugged. “So I’m rusty on the flight deck. Sue me. Got to rack up a few hours in a cockpit in return for helping with some ship maintenance. That’s what matters.”

Kylo bit back a smile. “You were distracted.”

“You and Pava gossiping about me behind my back?”

“No.” Flicking the snaps on Poe’s flight suit, he said, “You missed one is all.”

Poe sniffed and, with quick efficiency born from years spent in the military, resnapped the ugly orange coveralls the way they were meant to be snapped. His finger tips grazed the fabric from collarbone to waist. “Better?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Frankly, Kylo didn’t mind the disheveled look all that much. “So what’s going on?”

“I… nothing.” But it didn’t seem like nothing, not when his eyes kept darting to the cylinder and he kept twisting his wedding band around and around on his finger. “I just… brought you something.”

“The cylinder?” Kylo asked, dry, hoping to annoy him into getting on with it. A nervous Poe was a Poe who made bad decisions or no decisions at all. Besides, whatever was eating at him couldn’t be all that bad. Compared to all the other things they’d been through, a cylinder was nothing.

“It’s not—” He sighed, deeply, obviously, pointedly wronged. “It’s what’s inside the cylinder.”

When Kylo went to reach for it, Poe held out his arm to stop him. “You don’t have to keep it,” he said, “if you don’t want to. It’s—stupid. Not a big deal. Just so you know.”

Kylo elbowed him out of the way and snatched up the cylinder. Turning it in his hand, he inspected it, was fully prepared to twist the top off of it until Poe covered his hand and turned querulous eyes on him. “Seriously.”

“Okay,” Kylo replied, certain now that he was stepping into some sort of trap. Despite his burning curiosity, he refrained from immediately continuing to open the thing, racking his brain for any Yavinese gifting customs that might have gotten Poe this tangled up about what he was doing. Whatever it was, it was clearly important to Poe, but nothing sprang immediately to mind and Kylo could think of nothing to do except show as much respect as he possibly could instead of teasing Poe the way they always teased one another. “It’s not a big deal. Just a cylinder. Got it.”

Poe rolled his eyes, though he did relax some. He at least stopped holding Kylo’s hand in a firm, tight grip. “Not just a cylinder, but… yes.”

Once he opened it, though, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out its significance. Standing upright in rich, dark soil was a cutting from a very familiar tree. Except for the infinitesimally small pulse of energy it emitted through the Force, it was mostly unrecognizable, stripped of most of its leaves and flowers as it was. But Kylo knew immediately where it had come from.

“Oh,” he said, because arrogance ran strong within him and he hadn’t thought to expect—this. A knick-knack, a token, maybe, something thoughtful but easily brushed aside. Not a piece of Poe’s home, his history, Kylo’s own history, their families’ histories. A lump lodged itself in Kylo’s throat, stopping him from expressing himself with whatever degree of eloquence he might reasonably have dredged up for the occasion.

This wasn’t a gift. It was so much more than that.

And Kylo didn’t know what to say.

“Mom and Dad, they didn’t bring much with them when they settled on Yavin 4 after mustering out,” Poe explained in a low, insistent babble. “Neither of them really had anywhere else they wanted to go back to, you know? But they liked to tell me it was important to honor where you came from. Wherever you ended up. And whoever you ended up there with. I don’t know if they came up with it or what, but they gave each other, well. Dad gave Mom a—anyway.” He blew out a deep breath. “Doesn’t matter.”

It did matter, but if Poe needed to pretend he didn’t so he could get to an explanation, Kylo’d keep quiet about it. For now.

“I just—thought it would be nice. It hasn’t rooted yet or anything, and that cylinder will keep it in stasis until we’re ready to settle, if we settle, but. You know. It’s there. For us. And I wanted you to know that, too.” He rolled his shoulders and looked down at his hands. “I can’t exactly propose to you. This seemed like the next best thing.”

Carefully, Kylo screwed the top back into place and placed it on the table, almost reverent, to ensure no harm came to it. It was, as far as Kylo was concerned, better than a proposal. Curling his finger beneath Poe’s chin, he tilted Poe’s head and pressed a kiss to his mouth.

“You’re an idiot,” he said, fond, so fond that he couldn’t, for maybe the first time in his life, stop himself from smiling with full abandon, nothing holding him back from his happiness, not even himself and certainly not Poe, who looked at him with dubious suspicion. It was a fragile happiness, he knew, and might find itself damaged if he wasn’t careful, but he knew better how to care for such things now and he had a good reason to try.

The best reason, really.

The only reason that mattered.

“Thank you,” he added, sincere, though what he really meant, he thought, was, _I love you_.


End file.
